Reflection on Faith & Various Cultures

"And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)

Here in the Philippines, we have a lot of cultures and traditions that contribute to the big picture of our faith as Christians. We have had a long history of vivid and dynamic religious journey. Our understanding of our faith has been colored by our personal and national historical experiences of suffering and death, of triumph and festivity, of beliefs and customs. Specifically, our faith is marked by our deep devotion to the Lady. All these experiences have somehow defined and clarified our distinctive identity as persons, as Faithful, as Filipinos, and as a nation. (Cf. CFC 31)

Some of our popular devotions among us Filipinos (like for example: Jesus Nazareno and Santo Entierro) really touch our hearts because we see in these devotions our very own situations and the prism of our various cultures. These situations take place due to the existence of poverty, suffering, injustice, and oppression in our society. Our devotions prompt us to hope and to believe that our frailties and weaknesses will be healed and forgiven. Hopefully, our devotions will bring about an “accurate and ever-deepening personal understanding of the suffering and death of Jesus Christ.” (Cf. CFC 555)

Historical consciousness recognizes that faith-experience is both a product and a maker of history. For this reason, historical consciousness requires that our statements of faith must be explained within a context. Since it does not absolutize any one particular culture or one particular moment in history as having grasped the whole truth; the modern worldview is not satisfied with the mere repetition of the formulations of another age for a new era with new people and new experiences. Historical consciousness employs an inductive method which takes seriously the diversity of human experience based on historical and cultural differences. Since our faith is reflecting on the lived experience of the Christian community, it will be inevitably be influenced by the very context in which it finds itself. As a result, its practical conclusions will also colored by the limitations of historically and culturally conditioned experiences and expressions of value within that community.

We need to listen carefully to those other cultures, contexts, and social locations. Our faith should not be done by steeping oneself in only one tradition. Our faith today need to be done in a dialogue between one’s contextual perspective and the broad and deep tradition of the Christian church, and in a dialogue as well between the results of this interaction and perspectives of Christians from every part of our world. Our context will give us a clear, penetrating lens with which to read the deposit of faith. Furthermore, the basic tone of this perspective is one that not only takes Scriptures and tradition seriously as the “experience of the past,” but takes just as seriously “the experience of the present.”

To conclude my reflection, I would like to go back again to the Bible verse that speaks about the mystery of Incarnation found in the Gospel of John: “And the Word became flesh…” I think it is one of the perfect examples of how God’s plan harmonizes into our human aspirations, into our faith and various cultures. Jesus became like us in all things (except sin) and took on human life with all its responsibilities and problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. Truly, Jesus is our model of dialogue between faith and various cultures.