New heavens and a new earth

WE have to be familiar with this truth of our faith, and develop the pertinent understanding and attitude towards it, as well as the due preparation for it. We are reminded of this truth in the first reading of the Mass on Tuesday of the 9th Week in Ordinary Time from the Second Letter of St. Peter. (13,12-15.17-18) 

 There, we are reminded of the end of time and of the world when the heavens and the elements of the world will be dissolved, and the new heavens and a new earth will emerge where true justice will reign as promised by Christ. We are asked to be so diligent as to be found before Christ unspotted and blameless in peace. 

 This is not, of course, to scare us, but rather to put us in the most realistic mode regarding what our life here on earth is all about. We are here in this life to be tested whether what God wants us to be, that is, to be his image and likeness, to be sharers of his life and nature, is also what we ourselves would want to be. 

 This test is given to us in every event and circumstance of our life, in every aspect, dimension and level of our life, to see if we choose to be with God or to be by ourselves instead. It’s really a no-brainer choice, but many of us miserably fail to make the right choice. 

 Let’s remember that this earthly life of ours is like a journey towards God in heaven. We do not have our definitive home here. Let’s hope that we avoid straying from the proper path which, as we are warned by Christ, is a narrow road with a small gate. (cfr. Mt 7,14) 

 In all our activities, let’s always be guarded against our strong tendency to just pursue our own will that is abetted by our own personal weaknesses, the many allurements of the world, and the tricks of the evil spirits. 

 These days with the strong and almost irresistible pull of the new technologies, we have to be most cautious of the many clickbaits in the social media that would lead us to many distractions and ultimately to our own destruction. There also are just so many sweet poisons that can easily deceive us, and the Trojan horses put up by some powerful people and worldly spirits. 

 We should not be naïve, and following the advice of Christ, we should truly be clever and shrewd like serpents even as we maintain to be innocent like doves. (cfr. Mt 10,16) Toward this end, we should be clear about what the purpose is in using these new technologies, and that can be no other than to give glory to God, always following his commandments as we use them. 

 We need to sharpen our awareness that these new technologies and everything related to them should be nothing other than a means, an occasion, a reason to be with God, to give glory to him. Outside of that understanding, we would just be playing with fire, and it would just be a matter of time before we will be overcome by evil in one form or another. 

 It’s important that we avoid getting entangled with our worldly and temporal affairs, failing to relate them to God and to the expectation of the new heavens and a new earth!

Guarding against infidelity

LET’S not deny it. It’s a fact of life, as obvious as the noonday sun. We all have a strong tendency to be unfaithful to any commitment we make to others, and especially to God. 

 If our first parents, still in the state of original justice when they enjoyed all kinds of divine gifts, managed to sin, who are we to think that we can manage to avoid sinning and be faithful to God and others? We should always be aware of this danger and work on how to be properly guarded against it. 

 We are reminded of this danger in that gospel reading of the Mass on Monday of the 9th Week in Ordinary Time where Christ told his disciples about a man who planted a vineyard and let it out to tenants who later on refused to give the owner his due, even going to the extent of killing not only the messengers of the owner but also the son himself of the owner (cfr. Mk 12,1-12) 

 And we are given a clear idea of how to handle this danger in the first reading of the Mass of that day. (cfr. 2 Pt 1,2-7) Here St. Peter tells us that we can have grace, peace, and all things that work for godliness through the “knowledge of God and of Christ Jesus our Lord.” 

 In short, we are told that to guard against this danger of infidelity, we should always follow Christ who was ever faithful to the will of the Father in spite of the tremendous difficulties he had to face to carry out that will. 

 We should just try our best to be always with Christ who actually makes himself abundantly available to us. He is actually in all things we handle in our daily tasks. All we have to do is to be aware of him, avoiding being swallowed up by some technical or earthly considerations which in themselves should not be an obstacle in our relation with Christ but rather a means to get to Christ. 

 This would require of us to truly sharpen our rectitude of intention, because we cannot deny that there are many good and legitimate things we can do today or get involved in, and yet they may not be for the glory of God, which is how all our human acts should work on, but rather for our human glory or for sheer self-indulgence. 

 We truly need to continually examine ourselves to see if our intentions are really for God or simply for ourselves. As we all know, the distinction can be very tricky, given the many good options presented before us and the most subtle play of the motivations we have in our human acts. We need to observe the proper priorities of things. 

 We have to be most careful in handling our intentions. They play a strategic role in our life, for how and where we direct them would determine whether we want to be with God and simply with our own selves. 

 Our intentions express who and where in the end we want to be. Do we choose God, or do we simply choose ourselves, or the world in general? It’s actually a choice between good and evil. 

 Even if we are not aware, or refuse to be aware, of this choice, which is usually the case, the choice between God and us, between good and evil is always made with every human act we do. 

 We need to realize then that we have to take utmost care of our intention, making it as explicit as possible, and honing it to get engaged with its proper and ultimate object who is God. Only then can we be faithful to our commitments.

Assuming Christ’s Body and Blood

WITH the celebration of the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, what we are most reminded of is this incredible truth of our faith that Christ wants us to assume his very Body and Blood, if only to be truly one with him as we should since we are patterned after him, are that we are the image and likeness of God and sharers of God’s divine nature and life. 

 We should just try our best, always asking for God’s grace first of all, to adapt our thinking and the awareness of our true identity to this truth of our faith. To do that we should also try to follow Christ’s example, who being God emptied himself to become like us. 

 That is why Christ himself said that to follow him, we should deny ourselves, and given our wounded condition due to sin, we also cannot avoid having to carry the cross that first of all is the consequence of all of our sins, so that carrying it with him we can convert it into a means of our salvation. 

 That is also why Christ strongly exhorted us to be willing to lose even our life for Christ’s sake so we can have the real life meant for us, a life with God. (cfr. Mt 10,39) We need to spend time meditating on these words of Christ so we can build a strong, deep and abiding faith in them, and find concrete ways of how to put them into practice. 

 In a sense we have to be like empty vessels, a biblical term first referred to in 2 Kings 4,1-6 where a woman, troubled by the creditors of her dead husband, was asked to get as many empty vessels so that oil can be poured into them to pay for her husband’s debt. 

 That term has come to mean our need to empty ourselves so that the oil of God can fill us, which is the condition or state that is proper to us. We have to empty ourselves of our own selves, so to speak, so that the spirit of God, the spirit that is proper to us since we are God’s image and likeness, can fill us. 

 This need has been referred to several times in the New Testament, in particular in the Second Letter of St. Paul to Timothy: “If anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.” (2,21) 

 Let’s remember that God being our creator and savior through Christ in the Holy Spirit, it’s he who actually directs our life toward its fulness and perfection. We should find ways of how we can discern his constant guidance and how we can be most receptive to his inspirations and graces. The ideal condition for us is to be constantly aware of what he is showing us and to follow him as closely as possible. 

 Thus, we can already deduce from these considerations that we really need to be contemplative souls even and especially when we are right in the middle of the world which, in the first place, is where God placed us to test us to see if what he wants us to be is also what we ourselves would like to be. 

 We need to try our best to convert ourselves into real contemplative souls, the means for which are actually readily and abundantly available to us.