Both in the world and in heaven

WHEN Christ asked Peter about who should earthly kings require census tax, from the subjects or from the foreigners, obviously the answer which Peter gave was from foreigners. Christ was somehow insinuating that being the son of God, he should be exempted from that tax. But no. He also paid the tax so as not to make offense to earthly kings. (cfr. Mt 17,22-27) 

 With this gospel episode, we are somehow reminded how we ought to live by our earthly and temporal condition but without losing sight of our eternal goal. In other words, we have to learn, even now, how to live both in the world and in heaven. 

 This is, of course, a big challenge since we always have the strong tendency, due to our wounded human condition, to be trapped and swallowed up by our earthly affairs and forgetting our ultimate eternal goal. 

 Resolving this predicament would require of us, first of all, that we be clear about the unity of heaven and the world according to the mind of God, our Father and Creator. We are in this world as the training and testing ground to see if we too want to be with God. That’s what God wants us to be. But he does not force us to be so because we have been given freedom due to our being image and likeness of God. 

 We have to learn how to be in this world while directing ourselves towards heaven, where we actually come from since we come from God and not just from our parents, and where we are supposed to go as our definitive home. 

 This is where we have to develop the virtue of naturalness. It is something to do with how to handle our human condition considering what we ought to be and what we are at the moment. Fact is, we have a supernatural goal, nothing less than to be united with God, which we have to pursue in the context of our human and natural world. 

 Naturalness is about how to mix the spiritual and material dimensions of our life, our personal and social aspects, and other elements in our life that, given the way we are, appear to compete with each other. How to integrate and harmonize them is the task of naturalness. 

 Naturalness is a very active affair, lived day to day, moment to moment, as we grapple with the continuous flow of our concerns. It’s the front man who does the dirty job of the bigger virtues of discretion, prudence and ultimately charity, the foot soldier who does the hand-to-hand combat, the peddler who does the door-to-door selling. 

 The big danger we have nowadays is precisely to get trapped in the many wonders that we are enjoying these days, in spite of the pandemic. We have tremendous technologies, and the amount of knowledge and skills derived from our sciences, though with their limitations and imperfections, is huge and intoxicating. We always have the tendency that these things can be considered as our be-all and end-all. 

 To be sure, to meditate on heaven often does not take away our sense of realism and objectivity. The contrary would be the case if it is done properly. We would know the relative value of everything good and lovable in this world. 

 And if our loving would involve suffering, as it usually does, our meditation on heaven would convince us that such suffering is worthwhile!

Humility strengthens our faith

WE know that for miracles and some extraordinary divine interventions to take place for our very difficult if not impossible situations we can encounter in our life, we need to have a strong faith. This is validated many times in the gospel where Christ would only respond to those requests that are backed up by strong faith. 

 For example, in that episode of a father of a lunatic who was possessed by a demon, Christ reproached his disciples for being unable to drive out the demon because of their lack of faith. (cfr. Mt 17,14-20) 

 “Why could we not drive it out?,” the disciples asked Christ who said, “Because of your little faith. Amen, I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” 

 Faith, a strong faith, is always needed for miracles to happen. But to have a strong faith, a deep and solid humility is also needed. There is no way such faith can come to us unless we are truly humble. 

 We need to be humble to attract and receive God’s grace that would enable us to do what we cannot do on our own—to be able to love everyone, including our enemies. Christ has told us, nay, commanded us to love our enemies, and that is just impossible for us to do unless we have God’s grace. 

 But the grace of God, which is always made available, cannot enter into our heart and would have no effect in us unless we humble ourselves, denying ourselves of our own likes and preferences and willing to carry the cross of Christ, which is the cross that signifies everything that we do not want and also all the sins of man. 

 It is humility that is the gateway for God’s grace and Christ himself to enter into our lives, empowering us to do what God himself, who is all love, does. Humility involves a certain giving up, a certain dying that actually gives rise to a better life, just like a seed has to die before it bears fruits. 

 Remember what Christ said about this point. “Truly, truly, I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a seed. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (Jn 12,24) And he continued: “Whoever loves his life will lose it, but whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life…” (12,24) 

 How important it really is to learn how to be humble, unafraid of the many inconveniences it would surely involve! To humble oneself is actually never an act of cowardice nor the misfortune of a defeat. On the contrary, it requires a lot of courage to leave behind the nest of our comfort in order to fly to far distances, pursuing nothing less than heaven. And success and victory is assured, since Christ promised it. We should just have faith in Christ. 

 Humility is emptying ourselves that would strengthen our faith, since we would fill ourselves with nothing less than God himself, of whom we are supposed to be his image and likeness. Humility enables us to receive grace, and with grace we are enabled, in spite of our weaknesses and differences and conflicts among ourselves, to do what is impossible for us to do. It would be Christ doing it for us and through us.

The sublime and supernatural life

THE feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord (cfr. Mk 9,2-10) should make us understand that like Christ we too are meant to be transfigured to the supernatural life with God. That is what God wants for us. For that end, God has given us everything, Christ himself, so we can be what he wants us to be. 

 We therefore should try our best to develop a sense of the sublime and the supernatural while still immersed here in the things of this world. We are meant for a supernatural life. Our human nature, with our spiritual soul that enables us to know and to love, and therefore to enter into the lives not only of others but also and most importantly, of God, urges us to develop a supernatural life. 

 It’s a life with God always. It just cannot be exclusively our own life, taken personally or collectively. It’s a life that depends mainly on God who gives us the grace that purifies and elevates our life to his life. But it also depends on us, on our freedom to correspond to this loving will of God for us. 

 We have to develop a taste and even an appetite for the supernatural life with God and of things supernatural in general. In this we have to help one another, because in the end, this is our common ultimate end in life—how to live our life with God, how we can be immersed in God even as we are immersed also in the things of the world. 

 To be sure, developing the sense of the supernatural and the sublime is not a baseless and gratuitous exercise. It is what God wants us to have, since we truly are children of his. It is not our invention. It is, first of all, his will for us to which we have to correspond. 

 We should not feel uneasy about this truth, because on the part of God, he will do everything to make what he wants of us to be fully realized. All we have to do is simply to go along with his will and ways. 

 This sense of the supernatural and the sublime will do us a lot of good. Even psychologically speaking, it is a tremendous help. Imagine the calm, serenity and confidence it can give us! Imagine the joy it provides us even as we go through the drama of our earthly life that is often described as a vale of tears. 

 But the good that it gives us far exceeds what it does to our psychological self. It is what shapes us into God’s children. It is a clear mark that our faith, hope and charity are strong and working. In short, that our spiritual life is healthy despite, and also because of, all the trials and challenges we will be facing in this life. 

 We should develop this sense of the supernatural and the sublime by often reminding ourselves of who we really are. That way, we would somehow be in a state of awe and amazement. We would somehow feel reassured that despite our limitations, weaknesses, failures and even sins, there is always hope to attain our original and ultimate dignity because God will always be on our side. We just have to put ourselves in his side too. 

 Perhaps as a concrete way of developing and keeping this sense of the sublime, we should cultivate the practice of thinking that we are entering heaven to be with God when we end the day and have our rest.