Doubt Christ no more

IN the run-up toward the culminating act of his redemptive

mission here on earth, Christ finally was quite open about who he

really was. That is, that he was the Christ, the expected Redeemer,

the son of God who became man for our sake.

            And yet in spite of all the miracles and the wonderful

teachings he gave them, many of the people continued to be doubtful

and even suspicious of him. On several occasions, they even tried to

harm and eliminate him.          Of course, in the end they got their

way. They managed to put Christ to death in the most ignominious way

to die, i.e., to be crucified.

            It is a phenomenon that continues to take place today, in

spite of the most convincing of the miracles of Christ—his own

resurrection that later led to his ascension into heaven that was

witnessed by a good number of people.

            That many of us continue to doubt and even to be

suspicious of him can be seen in the fact that we continue to take him

for granted, to put him aside from our daily affairs as if he is

irrelevant or just a drag to our activities, and even to openly reject

and to be hostile to him.

            We need to correct this predicament immediately and

strongly, otherwise we would be fully cut off from the very source and

keeper of our humanity. There are many ways to resolve this problem.

We obviously cannot cover all of them, but we can at least mention a

few.

            One way is to disabuse ourselves from banking our belief

in Christ mainly on some tremendous miracles and extraordinary events.

That would be like testing or doubting God always. We should believe

in Christ, with or without miracles.

            Christ himself complained about this. “Unless you people

see signs and wonders you will not believe,” he said to a court

official whose daughter was dying. (Jn 4,48)

            We need to keep our faith alive and burning. We should

never allow it to cool down. That’s why we should strive to develop a

vibrant life of piety that is supported by a concrete plan for which

we should not be sparing in our efforts and sacrifices. It cannot be

denied that a plan to support our life of faith and piety will always

involve a lot of effort and sacrifice.

            Things should come to the point when we somehow can see

Christ in all the situations of our life, and discern his will for us

at any moment. In other words, that we practically make ourselves

contemplative souls even the midst of the world.

            This is not falling into fantasies. This is, in fact,

making ourselves most realistic, because in spite of our limitations,

we cannot deny that Christ is in everything and is actually

intervening in our life always. This is because being God, Christ is

the very foundation of all reality. He is everywhere.

            Let us hope that we can have a vivid awareness of the

presence of Christ all throughout the day, 24/7, and that we can be

drawn always to correspond to his loving and merciful will. We should

feel as much as possible God’s continuous love for us, and we should

try to repay that love with our love. Let’s never set him aside.

            The ideal to aim at is that we get fully conscious of

being with Christ all the time, and that it is he who is actually

guiding us and showing us the way of how to proceed in any endeavor.

That is why we need to set aside some time for some meditative prayer

so as to discern more clearly God’s will and ways.