“That Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts”

THESE are words of St. Paul in his Letter to the Ephesians which is the second reading on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. (cfr. Eph 3,17) St. Paul fervently desires that Christ be truly in our heart so that we “may be able to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth, so as to know also the charity of Christ, which surpasses all knowledge, that you (we) may be filled unto all the fulness of God.” 

 Amazing and incredible what St. Paul is telling us about who we really are, what we truly are meant for! “Fulness of God?” We most likely would ask ourselves. Lord, that is too much. Why do you go to that extent, Lord? We are contented with simply being your creature, but why do you have to make us like you? 

 The only way we can accept these words is through our faith which is a gift given to us by God himself but which we have to respond as best that we could. We should just say, Amen, so be it, knowing that though our best efforts can go only so far, it will be God himself who will complete and perfect everything for us and with us. 

 The truth is that even if God is already with us, we should still feel the need to look for him in Christ and to welcome him into our hearts. That would be the beginning of the life-long process of identifying ourselves with Christ, which is what is proper for us. Let’s remember that, to put it bluntly, the ultimate purpose of our life here on earth is for us to be like Christ, to be another Christ, to be Christ himself. 

 We are supposed to be ‘alter Christus,’ the goal and ideal that is meant for us, though we need also to do our part, free beings as are, to achieve that status. God, our Creator and Father, wants us to be that way, though he does not impose it on us without our consent that should also be shown with deeds and not just with intentions or words. 

 We are supposed to be ‘alter Christus’ simply because, if we have been created in the image and likeness of God, and Christ is the Son of God who is the perfect image and likeness that God has of himself, then we can only conclude that we have to be like Christ. 

 In other words, Christ as the Son of God is the pattern of our humanity. If we want to know who we really are, how we ought to be, all we have to do is to look at Christ and try our best, with God’s grace, to identify ourselves with him. 

 More than that, because of our sin that defaced the original state in which we, in Adam and Eve, were created, Christ is the Son of God who became man to save us. The immediate conclusion we can derive from this truth of our faith is that for us to know how to handle our sinfulness, again all we have to do is to look at Christ and try our best, with God’s grace, to identify ourselves with him. 

 Christ gives us the “way, the truth and the life” so we can handle whatever situation we can find ourselves in this life and yet be consistent with our true identity as “alter Christus,” if not “ipse Christus,” another Christ, if not Christ himself!

A big challenge: loving God by loving our neighbor

INDEED, it is a big, if not overwhelming, challenge! But somehow Christ himself clearly told his disciples, and now us, about this. The way to love God is to love our neighbor, whoever and however he may be to us. 

 We are reminded of this truth of our Christian faith in that gospel episode where Christ was asked about what the greatest commandment of God was, (cfr. Mk 12,28-34) which happens to be the gospel reading of the Mass on Thursday of the 9th Week in Ordinary Time. 

 While he said that the greatest commandment was to love God with everything that we have got, he proceeded to tell them about the second greatest even if he was not asked about it. And that was that we should love our neighbor as ourselves. 

 It surely causes wonder why Christ had to add the second greatest commandment. And the only possible and plausible explanation could be that since man is God’s image and likeness and thus shares in God’s life and nature, if we truly love God, we should also truly love man which is what neighbor means. 

 In other words, loving God is concretized and made immediate by loving man. And this is a big challenge because while we can easily profess that we love God whom we do not see with everything we have got, it is quite another story to love man whom we see and with whom we cannot avoid having differences and even conflicts. 

 We know that not every man is likeable and lovable to us. And yet we are commanded to love everyone, including even our enemies. Thus, Christ, the God who became man to give us “the way, the truth and the life,” said it also very clearly that we should love our enemies. (cfr. Mt 5,43-44) 

 This is the real test to see if we truly love God—when we manage to love everyone. This can only happen if our love for God is a faithful channeling of the love of God for us, as shown to us and enabled in us through Christ in the Holy Spirit. We cannot love God and neighbor if we do not have the very love God, which is his very essence and which is also meant to be our own essence. 

 This kind of love just cannot be driven by our own natural powers. It will always need the grace of God who actually is all too eager to give it to us if we would just bother also to be very receptive and responsive to it. 

 Again, this truth of our faith reminds us that our life just cannot remain in the natural level. We have been endowed with enough natural powers—especially our intelligence and will—to enable us to enter into the spiritual and supernatural level of God. We need to constantly remind ourselves that the fullness of our humanity is when we become one with God, and that the purpose of our life here on earth is to pursue that fullness. 

 This is where we need to do what Christ told us about how we can follow him, how we can love everyone as he himself has loved all of us. And that is that we should deny ourselves, carry the cross and follow him. (cfr. Mt 16,24) Only then can we truly love God by loving everyone else.

Sanctifying sex

THAT may sound like an impossible and quixotic thing, but truth to tell, not only would it be possible and practicable, but also and more importantly, it is an indispensable duty of ours, failing in which would be tantamount to degrading ourselves to the animal level, not to mention the ultimate failure of ours when we miss the real purpose of our humanity which is to be God’s image and likeness, sharers of his life and nature. 

 We are reminded of this duty in the gospel reading of the Mass on Wednesday of the 9th Week in Ordinary Time where Christ told some Sadducees who did not believe in the resurrection that “when they (all of us actually) rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven.” (cfr. Mk 12,18-27) 

 In other words, sex only has a temporal value. In our definitive state of life in heaven, when we are truly identified with God, we can still be male and female, but there would not anymore be any use for sex whose main purpose is to cooperate with God in creating another person. 

 In short, in heaven there is no more reproduction. The population is fixed, so to speak, and as Christ said, we would be behaving like angels, still with our bodies but which would already be completely spiritualized. That is, our bodily dimension with all its biological and other earthly components would be completely infused with the spirit of God, which is the spirit of love. 

 In our earthly life, we need to understand that sex has an important role to play. And that is, for us to cooperate with God in the making of man, something that should only be done only in the context of a lifelong commitment of marriage since the making of man and its indispensable need to be taken care of as human persons who are God’s image and likeness would require such commitment. 

 To sanctify sex means to understand its purpose and use according to God’s will and law about it. It should be trained to behave according to God’s will and law about it. But given our wounded nature, where it is very vulnerable to just follow the blind and erratic ways our hormones and other earthly factors, we really need God’s grace, first of all, and our all-out effort to attain its ideal condition. 

 Given how difficult this task can be, we have to understand that we may have to resort to some extraordinary means to keep our sexuality in its proper condition. In this regard, a saint once said: “To defend his purity, St. Francis of Assisi rolled in the snow, St. Benedict threw himself into a thorn bush, St. Bernard plunged into an icy pond…” (Escriva, The Way 143) 

 Indeed, we should not be surprised if we need to make use of some extraordinary means to keep ourselves on the right path with respect to how to sanctify sex. Sex should be a clear expression of love of God and of neighbor. 

 Thus, we need to understand that we can only sanctify sex and use it properly when we grow in our love for God and neighbor, such that we freely follow what God’s will and law on it is. As a corollary to this, we will understand that sex is actually a very sacred thing, and not just a toy to be played around according the movements of human or animal lust.