Relictis omnibus

THAT’S Latin for “leaving everything behind.” I first met that expression while reading in the gospel about the call of Levi or Matthew. The relevant passage goes:

“He (Jesus) went forth, and saw a publican named Levi, sitting at the receipt of custom, and he said to him: Follow me. And leaving all things, he rose up and followed him.” (Lk 5,27-28)

The first time I read it, many, many years ago, I was deeply intrigued. How could a man just leave everything behind to follow someone whom he hardly knew?

Perhaps Levi or Matthew already heard something about our Lord and must have been impressed. But to leave behind everything just to follow Christ after what seemed to be only a casual encounter is simply too much to believe!

Still that’s what the gospel narrates. And if we have faith in the gospel, then what it says there about Matthew must be true. So we just have to find other explanations.

I know that God’s grace can explain everything. We are told that with God, nothing is impossible. Still, we, being free, have the capacity to reject that grace. Cases of this possibility are also aplenty.

And so, I just settled at the thought that a special kind of grace must have been involved in this episode, together with a special, radical kind of act of faith on the part of Matthew.

Cases like this are abundant too. We can speak of God’s call to Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Moses, Jeremiah, Jonah, our Lady, St. Paul, St. Augustine, etc., etc. The list is endless, thank God, of people who responded to God’s call drastically.

It’s a thought worth pursuing further and validating in other similar cases, because I feel it will enlighten us and help us greatly in our human predicaments. I believe that in our life, many are the occasions when this kind of radical faith is asked of us, and we should be ready to give it.

Lately, I was reminded of this Latin expression because someone gave me, together with a number of priests, a gift certificate that is actually a memorial plan. It was my first time to receive such gift, and I did not know what to think about it.

It took me a while to accept it, knowing that one day, it will be my turn to go, and that it would be nice if the departure would not create very heavy burden to others. I realize that we have to leave someday, that we actually would leave everything behind.

It was a sobering thought that reminded me of what the Book of Job once said: “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return…” (1,21) Many other similar passages came pouring. From the Letter to the Hebrews, for example, we have: “Here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come.” (13,14)

I suppose we have to learn to live each day as if it were the last. That’s the ideal thing to do. We have to learn to live in such a way that we can go anytime, that we can leave behind everything without regret or remorse as much as possible.

With all the earthquakes, the tsunamis, the radioactive explosions and other earth-shaking calamities taking place these days, we better learn how to reconcile ourselves to the possibility that we have to leave everything behind sooner than we think.

This means that we have to develop a vision of life that spans beyond time and space, and goes all the way to eternity from where we came from and to where we ultimately belong.

This means that we ought to know what truly is necessary and essential in life so as not to be uselessly distracted or, worse, dangerously entangled with earthly things that will be left behind. It’s faith, hope and charity, and not money, nor political power or fame.

This task, I know, is not going to be easy, because at the moment, the mainstream mentality is almost invincibly earth-bound and time-bound. And there’s a drift toward indifference to the truth of faith about our life after death. Many people nowadays think that our life is just here on earth and that it ends in death.

Even many of those who profess the Christian faith prefer that things be other than what the faith tells us. They just resign to that faith, abdicating their duty to live and defend it.

There is a need to learn to live the “relictis omnibus” everyday.