Revealing the Face of God

Revealing the Face of God
by Bp. Gerardo A. Alminaza, D.D.

"The grace of God our Saviour has appeared to all" (Tit 2:11). With these words of St. Paul, Our Holy Father Benedict XVI proclaimed his Christmas Message this year. “The grace of God, rich in goodness and love, is no longer hidden. It ‘appeared’, it was manifested in the flesh, it showed its face... Jesus – the face of the ‘God who saves’, did not show himself only for a certain few, but for everyone.”
Every local Church and parish community is committed to make this “face of God” become more visible. All our efforts to realize our parish vision-mission, i.e., “a Christ-centered, participatory and enlightened Filipino church that is evangelizing, missionary and committed toward total human development” is precisely meant to make Our Lord Jesus Christ more present in our midst. Even the third objective of our pastoral statement, for example, which states, "augment, and later, even supplant membership in the Councils from the emerging leaders coming from the BEC cells so as to make these Councils truly representative of the parish" is geared towards this end.
It is striking to note that when “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14) it happened in and through the family of Nazareth, and henceforth the family has become the model and framework of renewal, development, and of our pastoral work. As in the family, so it should be in our Christian community. Even our Church’s preferential love of the poor is based on our family’s experience of how we treat the most vulnerable and weakest member of our family.
In the message of Pope Benedict XVI for World Peace Day 2009 come Jan. 1 entitled, "Fighting Poverty to Build Peace," he writes: “When poverty strikes a family, the children prove to be the most vulnerable victims: almost half of those living in absolute poverty today are children. To take the side of children when considering poverty means giving priority to those objectives which concern them most directly, such as caring for mothers, commitment to education, access to vaccines, medical care and drinking water, safeguarding the environment, and above all, commitment to defence of the family and the stability of relations within it. When the family is weakened, it is inevitably children who suffer. If the dignity of women and mothers is not protected, it is the children who are affected most.”
It is in this context that the CBCP has issued our pastoral statement on Reproductive Health Bill entitled, “Standing up for the Gospel of Life” last November 14, 2008. I enjoin everyone who really and honestly wants to understand our Church’s position on various issues on the sanctity of life to study this statement and the recent Doctrinal Congregation Instruction on Some Bioethical Questions, "Dignitas Personae."
As we approach the New Year, I would like to echo the Holy Father’s World Day of Peace message assuring the entire human family of our Church’s support through gestures of creative solidarity, not only by "giving from one's surplus", but above all by "a change of lifestyles, of models of production and consumption, and of the established structures of power which today govern societies." Living in this way, we shall certainly reveal the face of God in our world today.Wishing you all a New Year filled with hope and rich assurances of God’s love for you!