God’s mercy and our effort

GOD wants us to be like him, holy, merciful, perfect.

While he will do everything to achieve that goal and give us all the

means, he cannot force us to be like him.

  

            That’s because, like him, we are supposed to freely choose

to be like him. And given our wounded and weakened condition, a

consequence of the abuse of our freedom, we now need to exert an

all-out effort to correspond to his loving designs for us.

  

            We need to learn how to blend God’s mercy and the

all-effort we need to exert to achieve our ultimate goal and win our

definitive status as God’s image and likeness, children of his and

sharers of his divine nature.

   

            What we have to avoid is to rely simply on God’s mercy

without exerting any effort, or the other way around—to think that we

can achieve our goal with our effort alone without God’s mercy.

  

            The former position can be described as falling under the

heretical belief called ‘gnosticism,’ while the latter can be the

expression of another heresy called ‘Pelagianism.’

            Pope Francis, in his document “Gaudete et exsultate,”

exposed the dangers of these two heresies that still hold sway over

many good people who want to be holy as they should.

  

            It’s true that God is all merciful. He has the last word

on how we are to be judged. It’s he who will complete and perfect

everything in us, because in the first place he began a good work with

us. (cfr. Phil 1,6)

  

            Thus, no matter how much we have strayed from his will, he

will do everything to bring us back to him. “God did not send his Son

into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through

Him.” (Jn 3,17)

  

            Remember that episode when the disciples were astonished

at what Christ said that it was easier for a camel to enter the eye of

a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. (cfr. Mt

19,24ff) The disciples asked him, “Who then can be saved?”

              Christ’s response precisely reassures us that he will do

everything to save us. “With man this is impossible,” he said, “but

with God all things are possible.” (Mt 19,26) And St. Paul reiterates

this point when he said, “I can do all things through Christ who gives

me strength.” (Phil 4,13)

  

            We therefore should not be afraid to do things that would

seem impossible for us. We just have to go to Christ, following him

very closely, and the impossible becomes possible.

  

            Following Christ, of course, demands that we put to action

his indications for us. Like, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must

deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Mt 16,24) We

cannot overemphasize this need for self-denial since our first enemy

are our own selves, and specifically our flesh that simply wants to be

ruled by animal instincts rather than by reason that is inspired

faith, hope and charity.

  

            Christ also wants us to enter by the narrow gate (cfr. Mt

7,13), since our tendency is simply to give in to the delights of our

flesh without any thought about the need for sacrifice,

self-discipline and the like.

  

            Christ wants us to give our all in loving God and

everybody else. In fact, he wants that we love one another the way he

has loved us. This, of course, means that we, like Christ, should be

willing to give up our life out of love for God and others.

  

            Indeed, God has the last word. He is the one that makes

the impossible possible for us. He is the one who will complete and

perfect everything for us. But we also need to do our part, willing to

follow as closely as possible the example of Christ who is “the way,

the truth and the life” for us.

We should be willing to suffer

IF we really want to be Christ-like as we ought to be, then

we should be willing to suffer for God and for everybody else. This is

what Christ did. He was willing to obey the will of his Father that

involved the offering of his life for the sins of men.

  

          Imagine what Christ had to go through to save us! Being the

Son of God, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, he became man,

he preached what is right and wrong, true and false in our beliefs and

practices, performed miracles. But since we still cannot correspond

properly or stably to all this goodness of God, he had to offer his

life to forgive our sins.

   

          We have to learn to follow this example of Christ who, as he

himself said, is “the way, the truth and the life” for us. He went all

the way to recover the lost ones, unafraid of all the sacrifices

involved, living out the lessons he taught in those parables of the

lost coin, the lost sheep and the prodigal son.

  

          I wonder if we have this attitude of Christ. Unfortunately,

what is more commonly observed is that many of us tend to be

self-righteous, quick to find fault and to judge others. Many of us

cannot stand being contradicted, insulted, mocked, offended. In other

words, we are not willing to suffer the way Christ suffered for the

mistakes and sins of men.

  

          Many of us cannot even stand a view or position that is

different or contrary to ours. It would seem that many of us are

claiming that we have all the correct things, that what we have and

hold cannot be improved, enriched or even modified and, much less,

corrected. This is really the height of self-righteousness when

intolerance, inflexibility and rigidity are the rule of the day.

  

          This is not what Christ has taught us and has shown us with

his life and teaching. Christ bore all the sins of men, assuming them

as if they were his own and dying to them with his own death, but

conquering them with his resurrection.

   

          Though he was harsh with the leading Jews of that time, the

scribes and the Pharisees who were supposed to know better, he in the

end offered forgiveness to everyone, including those who crucified

him, because as he said, “they do not know what they are doing.”

  

          He was in fact very harsh with St. Peter himself who tried

to stop him from going to Jerusalem to consummate his redemptive

mission on earth. “Get behind me, Satan,” he told Peter in no unclear

terms. “You are a stumbling block to me. For you do not have in mind

the things of God, but the things of men.” (Mt 16,23)

  

          We just have to learn how to be patient and tolerant,

open-minded, slow to judge, with a good grip on our emotions and

passions, and ready to understand, to disregard irritating details and

to forgive and ask forgiveness, as well adept in the art of congenial

dialogue, avoiding being abrupt and abrasive. We have to learn to bear

the burdens of the others, no matter how undeserving we feel they are.

  

          Obviously, what should drive all these qualities is our

growing and deepening love for God whose love for us precisely goes

all the way in spite of our lack of correspondence and even our open

hostility to him.

   

          Absent this love, we cannot really go far in our effort to

understand one another and achieve a measure of unity and harmony

among ourselves. Sooner or later, we will end up squabbling that can

degenerate into bitter conflicts and almost irreconcilable divisions

among ourselves.

  

          If we really have to reach out to those who are lost, we

should be willing to suffer for them and with them, and not just

insist on what is right and wrong. This way, we follow Christ.

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.