To live by faith
Something Like Life
Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo

I’m not usually accustomed to discussing spiritual matters and one’s relationship with God except with close friends. But all the fuss about the film The Da Vinci Code and the unbelievable pronouncements of some clergymen—those who should know better—have lit a flame under my seat. So here’s my story.
       I studied in an exclusive Catholic girls’ school from prep to high school, under Belgian nuns who drummed into our heads the evils of being late for flag ceremony, copying your seatmate’s paper during tests, and holding a junior high-school prom when half of the country was poor and hungry. My father is what old folks call catolico cerrado, where every Holy Day (Maundy Thursday, Easter Sunday, Blessing of the Sick, Immaculate Conception, Christmas Eve, etc.) meant Mass. I’m surprised he didn’t force us to go to Church on Saint Valentine’s Day.
       Growing up in this environment is what perhaps gave me my rebellious streak. For a while, I boycotted Mass—which, of course, prompted my father to finally ask if I no longer believed in God. Then as now, I don’t believe one should go to Mass unless she sincerely wants to. It doesn’t guarantee a passport to heaven; neither does receiving communion daily prove one’s obedience to God’s commandments.
       It was in college (still in a Catholic but very liberal university) where my “faith” fell to new lows. I was no longer cocooned in my little world. My eyes saw the poverty, the struggle to stay alive in a country where the government cared very little about its citizens, the pain of people who were sick and dying. Why was there such injustice in the world? Why do the rich seem to have all the blessings while the poor become increasingly miserable? Where was He when people needed a hand to better their lives? Why did He allow young children to get sick and die?
       My faith already floundering, I turned to books. Perhaps I was looking for one definite proof of Jesus’ mortality and that everything I had been taught in school was a crock of you know what. Among the many I read back then was Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which became the basis of the phenomenal bestseller The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. So if Jesus didn’t die and ascend to heaven, then Christianity’s tenets, principles and beliefs had no basis. I also devoured so many books about the Knights Templar (supposedly the guardians of Jesus’ bloodline), the Priory of Sion, Grail legends and romances, and watched countless of documentaries on the issue.
       It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in God. Maybe I just felt that Jesus wasn’t exactly the answer I needed for the spiritual void I felt. I began reading books on Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and other Christian sects trying to find the right fit in my own wavering beliefs and lifestyle. I even remember watching Pat Robertson late at night and praying with him, crying out countless of times to what or who, I didn’t know.
       I don’t remember exactly when I started believing in Jesus again and finally returned to the Catholic faith. There was no singular light-bulb moment when I said to myself, “God or Jesus is real.” It just happened over time, perhaps on account of the many struggles I had experienced in my life. I found Him again…or He found me. But it has not been an easy path.
       I now love going to Sunday Mass (no matter how boring the priest’s sermon may be), listening to the Gospel, and singing the hymns. I read a page from a book of meditations and pray every morning before beginning my day. However, something just holds me back from going to confession, the last one being a week before my high-school graduation, I think. So I have not received communion in the longest time as well. And I have not been a paragon of morality and goodness. I admit I am still a work in progress.
       Yet I believe that whatever I do, someone up there is watching over me. He is listening to my prayers and always answers them, even if sometimes I don’t like His answers. I know that no matter how much I plan my life, the outcome will always be His call because He knows what’s best for me. And with profound patience, He will always help me learn the lessons I should have already learned a long time ago if it weren’t for my hardheadedness.
       I have seen Him and felt Him in the little acts of kindness of people I have met. Or in the many seeming unexplainable events in my life that most people will probably just dismiss as coincidences or perhaps “cosmic” timing. But to me, these are proofs of His direct hand in my life. And so I believe.
       A film like The Da Vinci Code, or the book for that matter, will not break or unbreak one’s faith in God. In the same way that The Last Temptation of Christ didn’t produce more heathens and The Passion of the Christ more believers.
       The book is a work of fiction. Sure, there is reference to a real Catholic organization like the Opus Dei, which has become a force to contend with within the Vatican. I know some of its members and know that they don’t use a cilice like the albino monk in the book or in the film. (Most of them are supernumeraries who probably believe that being married is penance enough. Self-mortification? You bet.)
       The so-called Priory documents used by Dan Brown as the basis for his book have already been proven to be fakes, probably the greatest hoax foisted on mankind. Even one of the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail recognizes that there is no singular fact, document or person that can support their book’s theory.
       If people lose their faith in God, for sure it would be not on account of some movie (and this one has been dissed by critics, so much ado over nothing).
       Maybe everyone has to go through a spiritual crisis to finally understand what faith is all about. It will not be easy and perhaps a few will cease to believe. All I know is that throughout my own personal struggle for understanding, He was right there waiting in the end.