Persevere in prayer

YES, despite whatever—dryness, boredom, lukewarmness,

tiredness and a long list of etcetera—let’s just persevere in prayer.

The effort to pray that may need to be heroic and extraordinary at

times will never go unnoticed with God our Father who can never be

outdone in generosity. To be sure, he will give us much more than what

we give him.

            Persevering in prayer will eventually give us new lights,

insights and impulses that will leave us amazed at the goodness and

kindness of God, his mercy and all-embracing love. It will rekindle or

at least fan into a flame our dying fire of love for God and for

others.

            When we persevere in meditating on the words of God found

in the gospel, for example, we would be astonished at how old familiar

passages and ideas acquire new meaning and open to us practically a

whole new world of insights that can inspire us to action and

different initiatives.

            Let us remember that the word of God, as the Letter to the

Hebrews would put it, “is alive and active. Sharper than any

double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit,

joints and marrow. It judges thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

(4,12)  As one saint also said, God’s word is eternal, always new

while it is also old. It will always be relevant and will engage us in

a meaningful way at any moment.

            In short, meditating on the gospel will help us to have

focus and sense of direction in life. It helps us avoid leading a

scattered attention, reacting only to the passing things, to the here

and now that often are mere fancies and curiosities. Let’s have good

control on our tendency to get distracted because of the internet,

gadgets, multitasking lifestyle, etc.

            It will help us to distinguish the voice of God who will

always be intervening in our life. More than that, it will facilitate

the continuance of our conversation with God who initiates it.

            Again to be sure, God will surprise us with some

overwhelming gestures from time to time to awaken us from our tendency

to sleep spiritually. This happened, for example, during his

transfiguration in Mt. Thabor before the three totally bewildered

apostles Peter, James and John. (cfr. Mt 17,1-12)

            We can expect some similar occurrences. Thus, some saints

experienced visions, ecstasies and other extraordinary things because

of their perseverance in prayer despite all kinds of obstacles.

            But, yes, it cannot be denied that given our human

condition we will experience all kinds of things that will make prayer

difficult for us. We should just try to comply with what Christ once

said to the sleepy apostles in the Garden of Gethsemane. “Watch and

pray so that you may not enter into temptation. For the spirit is

willing but the body is weak.” (Mt 26,41)

            Indeed only in prayer can we manage to deal with

temptations effectively. And that’s because when we pray, we unite

ourselves more and more with Christ and thereby share his powers and

his ability to ward off temptations and the devil himself.

            When we feel weakening in our prayer, let us take

advantage of that condition itself to go closer to God, even if we

have to crawl and beg. Let’s assume that logic expressed once by St.

Paul: “Power is perfected in weakness…for when I am weak, then I am

strong.” (2 Cor 12,9-10)

            Let’s always sharpen our dispositions for prayer. We need

to make our faith alive, making it more incarnated rather than simply

lingering in the abstract sphere. We have to strengthen our spirit of

sacrifice and mortification. We cannot persevere in prayer if we

remain weak in body and, worse, in will.

            Let us always try to look for the appropriate place and

time for our meditations.

Knowing and loving God

MANY people often ask about how they would be able to know

and love God. The question is understandable, since God is and will

always be a mystery to us. No matter how much we try, we can never

know and love him fully or enough.

            And yet it is actually easy also to know and love him, for

the simple reason that he is always around, and everything else in

life somehow points us to him if we have the proper disposition or

attitude. Besides, he is the most lovable being we can ever have since

he is the fullness of goodness which is the reason for loving.

            We just have to be wary of our tendency, often

unexpressed, of wanting to dominate God by knowing and loving him in

such a way that we could not know and love him more.

            This danger comes about because of our tendency also to

abuse our freedom. In so many words, we actually want to submit God to

us or, worse, to be superior to God or even to replace him. We want to

know and love him in a way that we cannot know and love him more.

            We have to remember that the highest level we can attain

in knowing and loving God is when we would finally be in heaven. There

we would enjoy what is called as the beatific vision when, as St. John

in first letter would describe, “we will be like him (Christ), for we

will see him as he is.” (3,2)

            But such state is a dynamic one, perpetuating itself for

all eternity. It’s not static in such a way that we have already

attained the highest level and that there could nothing higher

anymore.

            We just have to be contented with knowing and loving God

in the many ordinary ways we have at hand. In fact, everything in our

life, even our problems and the weaknesses, mistakes and sins that we

commit, can and should be made use of to know and love God. All of

these can be material and occasion for knowing and loving God.

            We can know and love God simply by fulfilling the duties

of our state in life and of the different positions we occupy in life.

By obeying our lawful authorities, we are actually obeying God because

any authority here on earth is always a participation of the authority

of God. (cfr Rom 13,1-2)

            And then we should try our best that all throughout the

day, with our spirit of prayer and contemplation, we would somehow get

to know what God is asking of us in a given moment.

            We are already given some general ways of knowing and

loving him. We have to get to know God through Christ in the Holy

Spirit who now inspires the Church and the many instrumentalities in

the Church.

            We are told to follow his commandments which are already

clearly articulated. We have to remember Christ’s words in this

regard: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” (Jn 14,15) In

short, we have to know as best as we can the will of God at every

moment. We have to be discerning of the finer points of that will.

            And so, as we are clearly told, we have to learn to pray

without ceasing, to love our neighbor as Christ has loved us, to love

even our enemies, to forgive others so that we may be forgiven also,

to love the cross. We are told that we be productive and fruitful in

life, making an accounting of what God has given us.

            We have to give special or preferential treatment to the

poor, because as Christ said, “Whatever you did for the least of these

brothers of mine, you did for me.” (Mt 25,40)

            There are endless ways of knowing and loving God. We just

have to do any of them, one at a time!

At home with the ‘last things’

WE need to be familiar with the doctrine of the ‘last

things.’ In fact, we need to feel at home with it, since it would

certainly play an important role on how to arrange and direct our

life.

            The doctrine of the ‘last things’ refers to what would

happen to us at the end of our life here on earth. These ‘last things’

are death, judgment, hell and heaven, with purgatory as a transitory

state.

            With death, I suppose we cannot question that anymore. It

is a daily occurrence. But we may have to exert some effort to believe

in the Christian faith about judgment, hell and heaven.

            Yes, there are truly such things. Even if we are to go by

our human reasoning alone, we would find our life here on earth

completely useless and meaningless if there would be no judgment, hell

and heaven.

            But we have to be careful with tackling this matter with

our reason alone. Without the light of faith, our reason can give us

all sorts of explanations. It can lead us to some exciting insights

but in the end, it can lead us nowhere. It can only give us so much

light. It cannot capture everything.

            The gospel is full of references to these last things, and

we are always encouraged to be watchful in this life so that we tread

the right path to our destination. Yes, our life here is like a

journey, a pilgrimage to our definitive home which is actually in

heaven where God is, from whom we came and to whom we belong.

            Said in another way, our life here on earth is all about

the ongoing creation of our own selves with God as the Creator and us

as our own co-creator with God. That’s because God wants us to be like

him, to be his image and likeness, to be his children, meant to share

in his divine nature and life.

            In a sense, our creation is a joint venture between God

and us, and the completion of this venture would be at our death and

at the end of time when, hopefully, we can, with God’s grace and our

effort, truly become God’s image and likeness and the dignity of being

God’s children definitively achieved.

            Yes, our creation is still a work in the making. We are

still under construction. But we have to look forward to its

completion. Thus, St. Paul in his Letter to the Romans said: “For the

creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of

God.” (8,19)

            This should be the basic attitude to have in life. We are

still a work in progress, and we should be doing our part in our own

creation, fully cooperating as much as we can with God’s work of

creation of us. For his part, God has given us everything we need to

attain our definitive status.

            Even if we mess up his plan, he has given us means to

correct our mistakes. But we need to do our part as best as we can.

Thus, we have to be wary of how we use our time and the many things

that we have. It would be good that every moment of our life, we ask

ourselves if what we are doing is what God wants us to do.

            This can only happen if we seek to identify ourselves with

God through Christ in the Holy Spirit who now works in the Church. Let

us always remember that we are supposed to be patterned after God who

makes himself fully available in Christ, who in turn makes himself

alive in us through the Holy Spirit that now inspires the Church.

            Yes, we have to revisit regularly this important doctrine

about the ‘last things’ so we would be helped in know what we ought to

do at every moment of our life here on earth.