Nourishing our unity of life

THIS is an abiding concern for all of us. Even if we have to contend with many aspects and dimensions of our life, it is only one life that each of us has, not two or three. And thus, to build and keep our unity of life is a daily task of ours. We can neglect it only to our own serious risk and damage.

Our life is not only biological that relies simply on our biological functions. Neither is it just purely physical or material that requires merely material nourishment.

Our life has many more important aspects and dimensions that need to be integrated into one whole consistent thing. There’s the manual and intellectual, the active and contemplative, personal and social, the material and spiritual, the temporal and eternal, etc.

And precisely because of our spiritual nature, we open ourselves to a supernatural level. That’s just how the cookie crumbles. Thus, we should also be aware of what is natural and supernatural in our life, the mundane and the sacred.

I must say that of the different pairs of distinctions among the aspects of our life, that of the natural and supernatural is the most tricky, and therefore the most ignored, the least appreciated and lived with consistency.

And yet, we also have this intriguing reality that a good portion of the people all over the world, usually the poor and simple, automatically realize that our life has both these natural and supernatural dimensions.

They may not be aware of it or able to explain it, but they show it in their behavior, their reactions to issues and problems, their lifestyle. They just believe in the supernatural and try to conform their life to it.

I must say that this wonderful phenomenon is an indication of the supernatural dimension itself of our life, because no matter how badly understood, there’s no other human or natural way to explain such faith in the supernatural.

The task of integration falls mainly but not exclusively on our intelligence and will. Moved by grace, they go beyond what is naturally true and good. They look for an object that is metaphysical, and enter into the spiritual and supernatural world.

The proper operation of these spiritual faculties of ours is that of knowing and loving. But it’s not just in discovering some cold facts, or enjoying a certain transient good. It’s more in having and keeping a living relationship with their proper objects.

Since the ultimate object of these spiritual faculties is in none other than God, the pursuit of this object is endless, and is done in a crescendo, since God will always be asking for more from us.

Besides, for Christian believers, being able to keep this living relationship requires constant sacrifice and conversion. Christ himself said so. “If anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross, and follow me.” (Mt 16,24) There’s no other formula for this relationship to prosper.

And precisely because of our spiritual nature, we are also capable of giving more, and of demanding more from us. We have to understand that whatever we know and love, no matter how mundane, should lead us to know and love God better.

Otherwise, we would not be knowing and loving properly. We would be misusing these spiritual faculties. We would miss building and strengthening our unity of life.

It is this loving relationship between God and us, always immersed in mysteries, which provides us with the highest principle and pattern of our unity of life. This is the gospel we have to spread widely to disabuse those who think our unity of life can be attained by other principles and patterns.

We have to understand then that our unity of life is a very dynamic process, never static. It may need some stable elements from us, like appropriate characters, attitudes and virtues, but these elements have to be alive to be able to grow, improve and be purified endlessly.

We just have to ceaselessly know and love God, a process that will involve sacrifice, since we have to contend with the limitations of our human conditions when oriented to the supernatural. This is not to mention the further limitations and deficiencies caused by our sin.

We therefore have to be willing and ready to undertake this process with a great spirit of sacrifice.