By Dr. Dencio Acop
‘Do not stifle your conscience’. This was a message from Saint Pope John Paul II whose shrine in Washington, DC I never fail to visit whenever I go see my son who lives nearby. That little video at the end of the visit always brings me to tears. I wish to discuss JPII’s phrase with you today highlighting three key points in the process. Our conscience is the voice of God operating within our soul. This is the first point I wish to remind all of us. It is also the divine code of conduct revealed to us by the Son of God before He took up His throne again by His Father’s side. This is my second point. And third is that we all need to listen more to this prompting of the Holy Spirit if our world is to be a better place to live in.
Many of us, up and down the centuries, keep asking ‘where is God’? We keep searching for Him in our lives especially when we feel sadness, emptiness, discouragement, pain, and death. We even doubt His existence when He does not respond to us. Sinner or saint, we question Him and His ways. But we fail to see that He is right under our nose. For He is the inner voice that we hear when we are alone deep in ourselves in the quietest and remotest of times and places. He is the guilt we feel when we sin. He is the inner force that gives us inner strength to do the right thing and avoid the wrong path no matter what. That voice is triumphant when it is heeded leading to marriages, families, and societies that are God-fearing, upholding of the moral law in favor of the common good. That voice is gladdened when it is listened to resulting in the spread of love and peace away from hatred and violence that tear His creatures apart. That inner voice is proud when it is obeyed despite the contemporary temptations that make man do anything but.
When Jesus resurrected from the dead and ascended into heaven, He left behind the Beatitudes and the evidence of His earthly life as the divine blueprint for how man should live his own earthly life. He left with us the true code of conduct on how we ought to conduct our affairs with each other. The Son of God was sent to save us from the evil one, the tempter who ruins souls just to smite the source of souls. Our conscience is our God-self who is constantly in battle with our fallen self easily tempted by fallen demons all around us. I am reminded of the scene in the movie Constantine when Rachel Weisz said she did not believe in the devil to which exorcist Keanu Reeves replied: ‘You should; he believes in you’. That the world is the abode of the prince of darkness cannot be truer today. If technology allows man these days to indulge in just about anything that his mortality can desire, it seems absurd to have to believe in a God who tells you what you can and cannot do. Then, as Frank SLADE confessed in his powerful speech, modern man seldom takes the righteous path nowadays because ‘it is just too damn hard’ given everything that is going on. Then, as Saint JPII evangelized: ‘Do not stifle your conscience’ nevertheless. Instead, embrace that conscience. Nurture it. For it will make God proud of you one day.
Finally, we all need to listen a lot more and better to our conscience these days. Why more and better? Because the occasions for sin are much much greater these days than ever before. I am sure you all have an inkling of what I am talking about here. There is an urgent need for many of us to convert. The world of today has never been more guilty of the sin of idolatry whether in the form of the love of money, self-worship, self-pride, or lust. Tell me this is not true. And you and I are all part of it. If there are sacraments in Christianity, they are meant to order us back to God. Put us back in order with the universal order of the Creator. There is no better way for us to live our lives than being in order with God, the source of all life. We need to do it not only to have a shot at heaven but in order to live better lives on earth too. When we say we need to earn a living in order to survive on earth, it is the same thing with heaven. We need to earn our way up there. We are not getting a free ride. Jesus saved us. True. But we need to earn our deserving it. We were given life and for that we should be thankful. But we can also lose that life thinking we have it all figured out. For that, we must be humble. The most important thing we need to learn about life we already learned in kindergarten. That God sees everything even when there is no one around. Do not ignore God. Do not stifle your conscience’.
