THAT is how it should be in our life. We should always
keep the centrality of Christ in our life. He is everything to us. In
the readings of the 4th Sunday of Easter (May 3), this truth of our
faith is highlighted.
“The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want,”
says the responsorial psalm. The second reading from 1 Peter 2 tells
us to follow Christ who was patient in his suffering and bore all our
sins. And the gospel has Christ saying, “I am the gate for the
sheep…whoever enters through me will be saved…” (Jn 10)
We need to develop the instinct of always looking for
Christ, making him alive in our life and patterning our life after
his. This business of always looking for Christ is a basic duty of
ours, a grave responsibility, in fact. Without him, we would just be
on our own, relying simply on our own light and powers that, no matter
how excellent, can never accomplish our real ultimate need of our own
salvation, our own perfection as a person and as a child of God.
We need to look for Christ so we can find him, and in
finding him, we can start to love and serve him which is what we are
expected to do to be ‘another Christ.’ This has basis on what Christ
himself said: “Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will
find. Knock and the door will be opened to you…” (Mt 7,7)
And finding him means that we make Christ alive in our
life. He is not just a historical figure. Let’s remember that before
he went up to heaven, he promised the coming of the Holy Spirit who
would bring to us everything that Christ did and said. More than that,
the Holy Spirit brings Christ alive in us.
We just have to exercise our faith to the hilt. With it we
enter into a reality that goes beyond what we simply can see and touch
and understand. With it we can feel at home even with the mysteries
which, by the way, abound in our life since we are not confined only
to the sensible and material realities. Our world includes the
spiritual and the supernatural.
Exercising our faith means constantly dealing with the
Holy Spirit. Dealing with the Holy Spirit involves certain
requirements, like deepening our knowledge of the truths of our faith
by meditating on the gospel, studying the catechism, following the
teachings of the Pope, etc.
It also involves constant spiritual struggle against our
weaknesses, temptations and sins. It certainly involves developing
virtues so that we gradually can be more perceptive of the promptings
of the Holy Spirit.
And being more aware of Christ in our life, we can start
patterning our life to his. For this, we need to know very well the
life of Christ. We have to try to discern what Christ is telling us in
each event of his life, what he is trying to teach us with his words,
deeds, reactions.
We have to know what his mission was here on earth, for
that also should be our mission. We have to expect to experience what
Christ also experienced, although in different ways and forms.
We have to have the very mind of Christ, the very identity
of his, to such an extent that with St. Paul, we can say, “It is no
longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Gal 2,20)
When we make our plans for our life, let us be more active
in conforming our plans with the spirit, will and ways of Christ.
That’s because, even if we fail to consciously conform our plans to
his, Christ on his part will shape it just the same according to the
plan he has for each one us.
No comments:
Post a Comment