Times have indeed changed!
THAT'S, of course, an understatement. As someone said before, change is the only permanent thing in life – might be a bit stretched, but it contains a lot of truth.
The other day I had this amusing experience of being seated in the plane between an elderly woman, atleast 70 years old per my estimation, and a young boy of about 9 or 10 years old. The woman, already with grey hair, was wearing denims with several tears in them, like what you see among millennials. And the boy, small and looking innocent yet, has earring on his left earlobe.
Once, while doing brisk walking in a park, I saw two young ladies -looking decent enough and the type I usually see working in places like Jollibee or 7-Eleven - wearing shirts that shocked me. Printed on their shirts were the words "I (heart) sucking head."
I thought if there was another, more acceptable meaning to those words than what I know. I admit I was bothered for the rest of my exercise. Did they know what those words meant, I asked myself. And I thought that I am becoming a stranger to the places I usually find myself.
Indeed, times are changing, and many other things are, too. I must make adjustments in the way I see and judge things. I know this is an abiding concern, but sometimes I feel like I have neglected this duty.
Despite these observations, I took pleasure in what Pope Francis said to those aspiring to become priests. He told them "not to be scared of young people and of tattoos" and to use these tattoos as a point to encourage dialogue. He said that even behind the things that are not so good, there is something that will bring us to some truth.
Saint Paul told us that we have to be all things to all men to be able to save all. (cfr. 1 Cor9,22) And Christ is the prime example for this.
We have to understand though that we can only live that ideal if we are identified with Christ. Otherwise, there is no other way but to ignore others, to find it difficult to adapt ourselves to others, or to be scandalized and be influenced by them instead of us influencing them for the good.
Toward this end, we cannot exaggerate the need for us to truly be with Christ all the time. This also requires us to live a healthy detachment from our ways and style of doing things, of our own culture and tradition.
We have to learn how to transcend beyond the many conditionings we are subject to, no matter how legitimate they are, because they don't have exclusive ownership of what is right and proper to us.
We must be careful to distinguish between what is essential and not in our dignity as persons and children of God. Remember that, even in essential things about us, there are ways and forms of living them out legitimately.
The essential things need not be lived in a uniform way. There can be a variety of living them. We must be discerning so that we would not compromise these essential things.
We mustbe adaptive and flexible without sacrificing what is essential in our dignity as a human person and a child of God.
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