The instinct of seeking God always

WE need to cultivate this instinct. It does not come automatically through the working of our biological make-up. It requires the grace of God and our effort. And for that, we have to learn how to deal with the interplay of the supernatural, natural and infranatural forces that are at work in us. 

 Yes, we need faith, the grace of God, plus the attitude of humility and obedience on our part to be able to feel the need to seek Christ always in our life. We also have to learn how to be guarded against our weaknesses, temptations and the sins and mistakes we commit that would definitely spoil our effort to seek God as an instinct. 

 It’s always God who makes the initiative for us to have this instinct of seeking him always. But we have to try to be discerning, receptive and responsive to this reality. And this can only happen if we are first of all humble enough to acknowledge that we are not our own being. 

 That is, that we just did not come from our own parents and the long line of our ancestry. Nor did we just come into existence in some spontaneous way. All of us and everything else in existence have a beginning. This consideration should lead us to the realization that we and everything else must have come from a being who has no beginning, who has always been existing from all eternity. 

 This is when we can start to realize that there must be a God who is responsible for the creation of the whole universe. And as we try to know more about him who reveals himself to us in various ways and continuously, we would eventually get the picture of who we really are, what we are supposed to be, and how our relation with God should be. 

 This is when we can feel the need to seek Christ and to be with him always. He is actually everything for us. We need him more than we need air, food, etc. He is our basic need because not only are we just any creature of his who needs him for existence, but we are the most special ones since we have been created by him in such a way that we become his very image and likeness, meant to share his very life and nature. 

 If we only would realize this basic truth about ourselves, then there is no doubt that we would feel the need to be seek him and be with him all the time. We just cannot be on our own. And by being with him, we would avoid drifting aimlessly in life. We would have a complete picture of the purpose of our life and of the whole universe. 

 For this to take place, we should understand that our freedom is best exercised when it is used to seek God first and always. We would realize that we are actually given a choice of whether we choose to be with God or simply to be on our own. 

 What can help us in this is when we learn really to have a personal and intimate relation with God by means of prayer and the other practices of piety, especially the reception of the sacraments. We would also feel the need for an appropriate means of continuing formation, considering that we often find ourselves inconsistent, vacillating and irresolute in our resolve and commitments. 

 Let’s hope that we can truly develop this instinct of seeking God always.

“Lord, you will show us the path of life”

THAT’S the responsorial psalm of the Mass of the 3rd Sunday of Easter, Year A. It’s taken from Psalm 16,11. It’s again another reassurance from God that despite the complexities of our life today that offers us all sorts of pathways that can be both alluring and deceptive, in the end it is the Lord who will show us the true path of life, the path that leads us to our eternal life. 

 We should not be too worried with what we have to contend these days. As long as we stick with Christ through the many instrumentalities made available to us, we can feel sure that we would be on the right track. Obviously, this would involve a lot of effort and sacrifice, and nothing less than the cross of Christ itself, but the final victory is guaranteed for us. 

 The challenge for us is how we can closely follow Christ who not only shows the way but also leads and accompanies us along the way. This, in essence, is what holiness is all about, holiness lived in our day-to-day routine. 

 This can mean that we should try our best to imitate Christ in our thoughts, feelings, words and deeds. If we manage to do that, it would surely have the effect of us loving God and everybody else, irrespective of how they are to us. It would involve a love that would lead us to develop other virtues and to grow in them, like the virtues of humility, justice, integrity, solidarity, charity, etc. It’s a love that would keep us going and growing. 

 If we follow Christ closely, we would know how to do our daily work well, honestly and fairly. As a consequence, we would be sanctifying our work itself and the world in general from the inside. In a sense, we would be making the Gospel present in all our temporal affairs, be they brilliant or humble and hidden. What truly matters here is the love we put into our work, and not so much the success of our work in terms of money, fame, etc. 

 But we might ask: can we really deal with Christ directly? The answer is: of course, we can always talk with Christ. It should be the most normal thing to do, since in the first place Christ who is God is always with us. While we cannot always have anybody to talk to, and sometimes we can even forget to talk with our own selves, God on the other hand is always with us and is always willing to listen and talk to us too. 

 That’s his nature. That’s his desire. God is the very support of our own existence, and that of everybody and everything else. And he, mind you, does not support our life only in a passive way. He’s full of love, of solicitude, of attention and concern. He’s actually hot with us. 

 St. Augustine said, “to know where God is may be difficult, but to know where God is not, that is even more difficult!” Christ himself reassured his apostles, “Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.” (Mt 28,20) 

 We just have to learn how to acknowledge this reality. Our problem is that we restrict our grasp of reality to what is observable only to the senses, and captured by our feelings. Our thinking is often so dominated by these human faculties alone that it fails to enter into the spiritual and supernatural realities. We need to do something about this problem.

Our need for the real bread

EVEN if we are told that we do not live by bread alone, (cfr. Mt 4,4) Christ is also concerned about feeding us with bread. This was dramatized in that gospel episode about the multiplication of bread (cfr. Jn 6,1-15). When he saw the large crowd who followed him closely and realized that they must be hungry already, he asked his disciples to feed them. 

 While it’s true that our ultimate need is to eat the very Bread of Life, the one that is Christ himself turned sacramentally into a bread, and the one that gives us eternal life, we are made to understand that neither can we ignore our immediate need for the ordinary bread. 

 We are both body and soul. We cannot be one without the other, although it is our spiritual soul that is more important since that is the very principle of the life proper to us. Still, the needs of the body also have to be met. 

 We just have to make sure that we observe the proper priority regarding these two kinds of bread. We cannot deny that we have the strong tendency to get hooked with one of them at the expense of the other. We tend just to worry about the material bread while practically ignoring the prime importance of the real bread which is the Bread of Life. 

 We, who believe in Christ, of course, know that this Bread of Life is Christ himself who, even if he died and resurrected on the third day and ascended into heaven, continues to be with us with his living presence, offering us the merits of his redemptive work and giving us his very own self as the imperishable food that brings us to our ultimate state—our eternal life in heaven. 

 He does not leave us only with some picture or souvenir or symbol. He is truly and really with us even while he sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven. And he accompanies us in our earthly sojourn, giving us the ultimate means we need to tackle whatever we may encounter in this life. 

 It’s a madness of love to which we have to correspond as best that we could. God himself gives us the grace in abundance to enable us to correspond to that love. We should not be scared of the tremendous prospect before us. But it’s up to us if we choose to love him or not. We should do everything to make use of what God is making available to us. 

 We are told that if we are generous with God, God will even be more generous with us, for he cannot be outdone in generosity. He assures us that whatever little we give to him with our whole heart will yield us a hundredfold. It’s always good to keep this divine assurance in mind. 

 That is why we have always been encouraged to develop and grow in our Eucharistic piety. We are prodded to know and appreciate more deeply the real nature, character and purpose of the Holy Eucharist, studying and assimilating the relevant doctrine, actively participating at Mass, receiving Christ worthily in Holy Communion, paying pious visits to the Blessed Sacrament, etc. 

But we should not stop there. Being the Bread of Life, Christ actually is showing us how to deal with all the situations, issues, challenges and trials that we can encounter in life. And we have to be quick to discern his will and ways.