Strengthening our faith in Christ

AS we commemorate all the souls of our beloved faithful departed brethren on November 2, we are reminded that we are promised eternal life as long as we believe in Christ. “It is my Father's will that whoever sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and that I should raise that person up on the last day,” Christ said. (Jn 6,40) 

 We should just see to it that we are always engaged with Christ whatever we are doing, whatever the situation and condition of our life may be. It should be Christ, more than anything or anybody else, with whom we should be relating. 

 For this, we have to train ourselves, considering that we are often entangled and trapped simply in the technical, practical and temporal aspects of our life. We need to make ourselves true contemplative souls even while immersed in the middle of the world. 

 We have to learn to see Christ in everything. If our belief in the constant presence of Christ in our life is not yet strong and abiding, then we have to submit ourselves to some plan or program that would make that ideal a living reality. Let’s remember that Christ himself assured us he will always be with us till the end of time. “I am with you always, even to the end of the age,” he said. (Mt 28,20) 

 We have to realize that we need to be guided by our faith more than anything else. We should be wary of our strong tendency to be led only by our senses, emotions, perceptions, imagination, memory, etc. 

 While these human faculties are indispensable and are very useful, they need to be guided by faith, otherwise we would fail to see the full dimension of the reality meant for us, that is, the spiritual and supernatural life meant for us. 

 It’s when we are guided by our faith that we would realize that there is such thing as what we usually refer to as “life after death.” In fact, we would realize that there is such truth as the “last things.” 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. 

 If we are guided by our Christian faith, we would know that our life here on earth is some kind of training and testing ground God is giving us. God is actually still forming us to be what he wants us to be—his image and likeness, his adopted children meant to share in his very own life. Our creation is not yet finished. It’s still a work in progress. 

 This is a truth of faith that should be clear in our mind so that we can do our part properly in God’s ongoing creation of us. In short, we can say that God is still training us as well as testing us, because even if he is the one who solely creates us, he wants us to correspond properly to his designs for us. 

 That’s because we are not merely inert creatures or living creatures like the plants and animals that are incapable of knowingly and lovingly corresponding to their creation by God. We, on the other hand, being endowed by God with intelligence and will and freely given his grace, have to also want what God wants us to be. We have a role to play in making ourselves God’s image and likeness.

We can all be saints!

LET’S be clear about this. We can all be saints. In fact, we should try our best to be saints, since insofar as God is concerned, everything has been given so that what he wants us to be can really turn into reality. Things just depend on us, on how we correspond to the will of God for us. 

 Remember St. Peter citing a passage from the Scripture: “You must be holy because I am holy.” (1 Pt 1,16) And St. Paul reiterates the same idea: “This is the will of God—you sanctification.” (1 Thes 4,3) And Christ himself said: “Be perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Mt 5,48) 

 With everything that God through Christ in the Holy Spirit has done for this purpose, we can say that our ultimate failure would be if at the end of our earthly life we fail to be saints. 

 Not only is God offering us grace, the Church, the sacraments, the doctrine, etc., etc., he in Christ is also eager to identify himself with our worst condition in our life, showing us how to handle it so we can manage to share his own life, that is, to be holy and be saints. Thus, in the gospel of the Solemnity of All Saints, we are reminded of the beatitudes that reassure us that we can blessed in our bad conditions of being poor, persecuted, etc., if we follow him. (cfr. Mt 5,1-12) 

 We should feel at home with this most wonderful will of God, overcoming whatever disbelief and awkwardness we may have about it, and trying our best to follow all that Christ has taught, shown, commanded and empowered us. 

 Sanctity should be constant concern we ought to have. We should not be derailed from this pursuit by aiming only at some practical purposes and other earthly and human goals which, no matter how legitimate, can only be at best a means, an occasion, an instrument to develop sanctity and to do apostolate which always go along with the pursuit for holiness. 

 Our work, for example, for which we spend most of our time during our active life, can and should be a wonderful occasion to seek sanctity and do apostolate. It’s there where we can truly encounter God and others and develop our intimate relationship with them. 

 We should never regard our work as purely worldly as to have no relation with God and others. If we let ourselves be guided by our Christian faith, we know that our work, no matter how mundane and small as long as it is honest, is always our cooperation in the abiding providence of God over all his creation. It is supposed to lead us to God and to strengthen our relation with everybody else. There is something sacred in it. 

 When we end the day with an examination of conscience which is highly recommended if we are truly serious with our God-given life, we should have the sensation that there is some growth, no matter how small, in our sanctity. We should not judge the value of our day by purely earthly standards like efficiency, profitability, practicality, etc. 

 There should be the sensation that we are getting closer to God and everybody else, because we manage to give our heart to them, willing to fight and overcome any obstacle that we can encounter in our pursuit for our love for God and others, which is the essence of sanctity.

Give without expecting any return

CHRIST somehow makes us to understand that we have to learn to give ourselves to others without expecting any return by telling a host who invited him to invite those who would be unable to return the invitation. (cfr. Lk 14,12-14) 

 “When you hold a lunch or a dinner,” he said, “do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters or your relative or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment. Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” 

 It’s not that we should not care for our friends and relatives, since Christ told us to love everyone. But we should give special or preferential treatment to those who are in greater need, for this would clearly show the kind of charity we are living, the charity that would merit to “be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” 

 In this regard, we have to exert special effort because given our wounded human condition, prone to fall into self-indulgence and the like, we always tend to invite and to deal only with those who can give us some worldly honor, glory and pleasure. And we can do this in a most subtle ways by appearing as if we are being very magnanimous when, in fact, we are indulging on our pride, vanity and conceit. 

 To be able to live by this indication, we should make sure that whatever we do should be done with utmost rectitude of intention. That means that everything should be done for the glory of God. As a Latin maxim would put it, “Deo omnis gloria!” 

 St. Paul expressed it this way: “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” (1 Cor 10,31) Such motive never undermines our true joy. On the contrary, it heightens our joy and sense of fulfilment, and affirms our true dignity. We have to be wary of the deceptive thought that giving glory to God in all that we do detracts from our true joy. 

 We have to give all the glory to God because being the Creator, God is the standard for everything. And more than the standard, he is, in fact, the very substance of what is good, true and beautiful, what is fair and just, what is perfection itself. 

 Nothing is good, true and beautiful, nothing is fair and just, nothing is perfect if it is not done with God and for God. In short, we need to refer all our acts to God. We have to make this affirmation very clear in our mind and do everything to make that ideal a reality. 

 And so, a lot depends on our intention, because our intention is the very expression of 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. 

 We need to realize then that we have to take 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. We should try our best to shun being simply casual or cavalier about this responsibility.