“Lord, show us the way…”

THIS should be the request that we should constantly make as we pursue the real goal of our life, which is our own sanctification and our duty to do apostolate. God in Christ has offered us “the way, the truth and the life” so we can manage to be on the right path despite the heavy drama that we can encounter in our earthly life. 

 We should always go to God in all our efforts to grow into the fulfillment and perfection of our humanity. We should never rely on our own human powers alone, though we have to also make full use of them, but always under the animation of God’s grace. 

 That gospel episode where Christ practically begged the leading Jews of his time to believe him rather than their own ideas (cfr. Jn 5,31-47) clearly tells us we should refer everything in our life to Christ. 

 Even the basic things of our life—like how to study and work well, how to live the virtues of humility, temperance, order, etc.—just should not be a matter of personal concern alone. God in Christ through the Holy Spirit should be at the beginning, end and the middle of them all. 

 This is how we can make all our temporal and earthly affairs acquire the eternal and redemptive value that we should all aspire. Thus, we have to learn the habit of asking Christ, “Lord, show us the way…” In fact, we should try to make that habit like instinct because such attitude is truly proper to us. 

 When we just rely on our own powers, there is no way but for us to simply end in some disaster sooner or later. When we get blinded by our own pride, we would even willingly head to such disaster not knowing that such is the case. 

 We cannot deny that given the basic truth of our faith that we are God’s image and likeness, sharers of his supernatural life and divine nature, we are faced with an impossible challenge. It would only be with him that we can manage to make the impossible possible and practicable. 

 We would not know how to pray if we would just rely on our human talents alone. Much less would we be able to resist the many strong temptations around, especially in the area of purity, if we are not with God. 

 Obviously, we have to fight against the usual natural, not to mention the infranatural, awkwardness involved in this effort to refer everything to God. We really need to activate our faith, hope and charity that first of all are gifts given to us by God. That is how we can counter that awkwardness. 

 Let’s hope that we can make it as some kind of system in our life to instinctively refer everything to God, asking him to concretely show us the way of how to deal with a particular issue in our life. We have to acknowledge that we are actually helpless when we are just by ourselves. 

 For this, we really should rev up our intellect and will, the primary faculties we have, so that they can actively engage us with God as we go through the different events and situations in life. They are the faculties that would spark and keep our faith, hope and charity alive and kicking. They are the ones that are supposed to direct the other faculties and powers we have so they can act at God’s promptings.

Pivoting from the customary to the heroic

THIS is how our spiritual life should be, how our relation with God and with everybody else should be. It will always involve the dynamic of pivoting from where we are at the moment to another and higher level of love and self-giving. 

 We have to be wary of our tendency to be contented with what we may already have achieved in terms of loving. We should see to it that we continue to break new frontiers in loving. Despite our limitations, we know that with God, nothing is impossible. Things would just depend on us, on how we are receptive and corresponsive to God who loves us first and teaches us and enables us to love the way he loves. 

 Let’s not be deceived by the rationalization that we have already given much. St. Augustine somehow warned us of that danger when he said to the effect the in our spiritual life, if we do not move forward, we actually move backward. There’s no such thing as a stable point in loving. 

 Heroism is the name of the game of our life. We have to go all the way until we give up our life, channeling the same love that Christ showed us. He gave up his life out of love for us and in fidelity to God the Father’s will. 

 For this, we really need to continually ask God for grace, light and strength, so we may know what we ought to do. We have to make plans and strategies to carry out this ideal of love meant for us. 

 We have to remember that God already has given us everything so we can love the way he loves us. As Christ said: “To whom much is given, much will be required.” (Lk 12,48) We have been blessed with talents, wealth, knowledge, or time and are expected to use these gifts to help others and to give glory to God. 

 Definitely, loving will always involve and, in fact, require sacrifice. Where there is no sacrifice, there cannot be love. Love grows only to the extent that we are willing to make sacrifices. Without sacrifice, we sooner or later will be swallowed up by our own egoism, our own selfishness. 

 And this selfishness can take the form of laziness, attachment to certain things to the point of self-absorption, etc. We have to be ready to do battle against these anomalous tendencies of ours. 

 We should always remember that the very essence of love is self-giving. In love, the lover needs to lose himself in his beloved. He has to be identified with his beloved. And this will always involve self-denial. 

 The self-giving and losing that love requires would actually enrich the person in his dignity. This way of loving conforms to what Christ himself said: “Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mt 16,25) 

 That’s why Christ himself said that if anyone wants to follow him, that person has to deny himself and, in fact, should carry the cross also. Otherwise, he cannot love. And true love is personified in Christ himself. 

 In other words, we can only love truly when we identify ourselves with Christ who precisely commanded us to love one another as he himself has loved us. We have to understand that only in Christ would we manage to keep our love alive and vibrant, always fresh, new and creative. It’s a love that is open to anything, and willing to go through all the challenges, trials, difficulties, etc. 

 In short, only with Christ can we manage to pivot from the customary to the heroic, from the traditional to the innovative, etc.!

Unifying our external senses and our spiritual powers

WE should do our best to pursue this ideal. We know that due to our wounded condition here on earth, there is division and conflict between our corporeal and spiritual dimensions of our life. St. Paul articulated this condition well when he said: “I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” (Rom 7,19) 

 But there is always hope as long as we also train ourselves precisely to unify our external senses and corporeal faculties, and our spiritual powers. Unifying our external senses and our spiritual powers brings about the basic unity of life we are meant to have. It’s a way to achieve that ideal condition of our life where we become recollected and contemplative even in the midst of our earthly affairs. 

 And by unity of life, we mean the ideal of first of all letting our spiritual powers be animated by the spirit of God, and then letting our spiritual powers animate our external senses. The perfection of this unity of life is when we manage to unite ourselves in the life and nature of God as we are meant to be, since we are God’s image and likeness. 

 Of course, our external senses—sight, hearing, feeling, etc.—feed our spiritual powers of our intelligence and will with raw data, but these spiritual powers of ours, in a manner of speaking, should refine and purify the data received, and animate them with the spirit of God, that is, with our faith, hope and charity. 

 We should avoid reversing the roles between our corporeal and spiritual faculties, making our external senses rule and dominate our spiritual powers. Nowadays, this anomaly is taking place and is quite common even. Our external senses are now overstimulated to such an extent that they deaden or numb our spiritual faculties. 

 As consequences, we are seeing a rise in mental illness and a greater vulnerability to demonic possessions and other irregular situations. Many people, especially the young ones, are falling into all kinds of obsessions and addictions. 

 The main problem, of course, is that the senses are not united or inspired by faith. They are just left on their own, ruled mainly by instincts and other biological factors. Or at best they may be guided only by an intelligence that is not yet enlightened by faith. 

 And things can become so bad that these senses can get quite hostile to anything related to faith that definitely involves spiritual and supernatural realities. We need to realize that the first, last and constant object that our senses should perceive is God since he is the origin of everything, the maintainer of the existence of all things. He is everywhere. .

As St. Augustine once said: “To find where God is may be difficult, but to find where he is not, that is even more difficult.” And to be sure, God’s presence in everything is not something cold and indifferent. It is full of love and solicitude. He is always and actively intervening in our lives. 

 We need to train our senses to be guided by our Christian faith, hope and charity, so we can capture this very consoling reality. They should not just be left on their own, guided and ruled only by factors other than our faith, hope and charity. That state of affairs would lead us nowhere other than trouble. 

 Thus, if we are serious with guiding our senses and emotions with faith, we have to realize that our faith should not just be an intellectual affair, lived and pursued only in the spiritual world of good intentions and right doctrine. It has to involve the basic elements of our humanity, which are our senses, our feelings, our emotions and passions.