THIS is a
question many people ask after being told that
we are all meant to live a supernatural life. And we just
have to
start explaining.
First, that we
are meant to live a supernatural life is
based on the fact that we have been created by God in his
image and
likeness. We are meant to be children of his, meant to
share in the
very nature and life of God, as St. Peter himself in his
second letter
said so:
“His (God’s)
divine power has granted to us all things
that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge
of him who
called us to his own glory and excellence, and by which
he has granted
his precious and very great promises, that through these
you may
escape the corruption that is in the world because of
passion, and
become partakers of the divine nature.” (1,3-4)
Our life is
always a shared life with God, because as a
creature of his, we cannot be without our Creator who
gives and keeps
our very own existence. And of all the creatures, we as
persons,
endowed with the capacity to know and to love, have a
very intimate
character in our coming from him and belonging to him.
But before we
do our part in developing a supernatural
life, we are told that God has already given us
everything so that we
can share in his divine nature and supernatural life. He
has given us
his grace which comes to us in many, many ways.
We have the
sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist. We
have his living word in the gospel and other
instrumentalities that
spread this living word of his. We have the living
witnesses of many
holy men and women, starting with our Blessed Mother,
etc.
We need to feel
at home with this truth of our faith that
our life is meant to be supernatural with God. On the
part of God, he
has adapted himself to our own condition, wounded as it
is by sin, by
becoming man and going all the way to assuming all our
sins even
without committing sin just to save.
St. Paul said
this: “For our sake he (God) made him
(Christ) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we
might become the
righteousness of God.” (2 Cor 5,21)
The corollaries
we can derive from these wonderful words
can be that any situation we can find ourselves in,
whether it is big
or small, ordinary or extraordinary, good or bad, is a
situation where
we can always find Christ, Christ who is willing to save
us, to put us
to the right path, to lead us to our eternal destination.
We should
disabuse ourselves from the idea that
supernatural life in this world is exclusively a life of
wine and
roses, all bliss, and extraordinarily beautiful. We
should disabuse
ourselves from the idea that supernatural life is one
that is marked
only by very special experiences like ecstasies,
levitations,
bilocations, stigmatas, glossolalia, and other mystical
experiences.
Supernatural
life here on earth can be spent in an
environment of blood, sweat and tears. In fact, the cross
in all its
forms can be considered a genuine sign that one is living
a
supernatural life.
All we have to
do is to be mainly guided by our faith,
rallying all our powers—our intelligence, will, emotions
and passions,
our memory and imagination, etc.—to the dynamic of our
faith.
Let’s remember
always we are only on some kind of
pilgrimage in this earthly life of ours now. We are meant
for
eternity—with God in heaven. That is our definitive life.
But we have
to see to it that our earthly life is also supernatural,
and not just
natural, because, in our case, there is no such thing. If
our life
here is not supernatural, then it is just animal life and
is
completely inhuman.
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