Our spiritual and supernatural bearing

WE all have to learn to develop our spiritual and

supernatural bearing, since this is what is proper to us. As persons

with intelligence and will, we cannot help but have a spiritual

character in our life. With these natural endowments, we are meant to

enter into the spiritual world of ideas and rationality, of cognition

and love that goes beyond the material and sensible aspect of our

life.

  

          And as children of God, created in God’s image and likeness,

we are meant to enter into an intimate relation with him, which cannot

be other than supernatural, since God is beyond our nature. This is

always possible since God gives us his grace, and we, on our part,

with our spiritual endowment of intelligence and will, are enabled to

be elevated to the supernatural order of God when we correspond to

God’s grace.

  

          This basic truth of our life should always be on our mind,

and should animate all our thoughts, words and deeds. We need to pause

from time to time to allow this truth to take hold of our mind and

heart, and of our life, in general, using the appropriate means.

  

          That is why we need to spend time praying and meditating on

the truths of our faith, so that this spiritual and supernatural

bearing that we should aim at having can take root and develop. And

all throughout the day, we have to have recourse to certain practices

that not only would remind us of this truth, but would also help us

live it.

  

          As children of God, we are actually being conformed to

Christ who is the Son of God who became man so that we may have a way

to becoming like God, as God wants us to be.

  

          We cannot overemphasize this wonderful truth of our faith

about ourselves. This is what our Catechism says about this point:

“The Word (the son of God) became flesh to make us ‘partakers of the

divine nature.’ ‘For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of

God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion

with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of

God.’

  

          “‘For the Son of God became man so that we might become

God.’ ‘The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his

divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men

gods.’” (460)

   

          This truth of faith about ourselves should fill us with awe

together with a great sense of responsibility, because while this

privilege is gratuitously given to us by God, we are also meant to

correspond to it as best that we can.

  

          This spiritual and supernatural bearing of ours does not in

any way detract, undermine, much less, nullify our humanity. It rather

purifies and elevates our humanity to its most perfect state. We

should just learn to adapt ourselves to this basic truth about

ourselves, conquering the initial awkwardness we may feel about it,

and deploying all our powers to achieve it with the grace of God.

  

          Definitely, this spiritual and supernatural bearing of ours

would lead us to refer everything in our life to God, to see God in

everything and to discern his abiding providence over all his

creation.

           It will be shaped and directed by God’s gifts of faith, hope

and charity that, in turn, will inspire the development of the human

virtues like humility, prudence, justice, temperance, etc.

  

          Let us hope that each one of us, in any way possible and

practicable given our peculiar circumstances, can find a way to

acquire and maintain this spiritual and supernatural bearing that is

proper to us. And let us help everybody else to have it too, giving

good example and timely pieces of advice culled from our own

experience, prayer and study.