We have the highest dignity in the whole universe

WE should be most aware of this fundamental truth about ourselves. It should make us most happy and most unwilling to exchange it for something else that would undermine it. No amount of worldly pleasure, fame and wealth can surpass and outshine it. 

 And the simple reason is that we have been made in God’s image and likeness, sharers of his life and of his very nature. God shares his life and his very self with us, and it is just up to us to correspond to that truth by following God’s will and ways, instead of just following our own will. 

 Sad to say, we are notorious for doing the opposite. Instead of following God’s will, we prefer to simply do ours. It’s like we make ourselves our own God which is a very strong temptation to us since we usually think that our freedom entitles, nay, commands us to be simply on our own, guided only by our own estimation of things. 

 We need to strengthen our self-awareness of this basic truth about ourselves, recognizing our real worth and value as a child of God who gives us everything to be truly his child. 

 For this, we need to grow spiritually by deepening our relationship with God through prayer and continuing study of our faith so we would know God more and more, so that by so doing we also would know ourselves better. That’s simply because how God is should also be how we should be. 

 It may be incredible and hard to accept, but that who we really are. Indeed, for us to be able to accept this truth and live by it, we need to be truly humble, to continually deny ourselves since we always have the tendency to simply follow what we think instead of what our Christian faith teaches us. 

 Of course, to become more and more like God as we should, we need to develop virtues that would facilitate our unity and identification with God. To mention a few, aside from humility, we need to be compassionate, kind, magnanimous, patient. 

 We should realize that the most important duty we have is to earnestly know and fulfill the will of God for us at every moment. We need to train ourselves for this duty, since we all know that we always tend to do our own will rather than God’s will. 

 This is a basic truth that we need to spread around more widely and abidingly, since it is steadily and even systematically forgotten and, nowadays, even contradicted in many instances. We need to inculcate this truth to children as early as when they can understand and appreciate it. Then let’s give them the example of how it is lived. 

 God’s will is the source of everything in the universe. The whole of creation in all its existence, unity, truth, goodness and beauty starts from God’s will and is maintained by it. The entire range and scope of reality—be it material or spiritual, natural or supernatural, temporal or eternal—is “contained” there, not only theoretically but in vivo. 

 We need to pound it hard into our mind and heart that we need live by God’s will if we truly want to keep our dignity as children of God! We have to be wary of the many things that would now desensitize us from this need as we are prodded to go full-blast into self-indulgence.

Deeds, deeds, deeds, more than words and intention

IN the gospel, we are reminded that we should not just be good hearers of the word of God, but rather its doers. (cfr. Mt 7,21.24-27) In fact, we have to convert God’s word into our very own life, since that’s where we can start and keep our sharing with God’s life and nature as we are meant to do and be. 

 By acting on God’s word, we would actually be living by God’s will, which is what is most important to us. It’s not just following our will which is, of course, indispensable to us. Otherwise, we would be undermining our very own freedom and our humanity itself. Whatever we do is done because we want it. It should be a fruit of our freedom. 

 But what is most important is to conform our will to God’s will, which is even more indispensable to us. Otherwise, we sooner or later would destroy our freedom and our humanity itself, since God is the very author and the very lawgiver of our freedom and our humanity. 

 This is a basic truth that we need to spread around more widely and abidingly, since it is steadily and even systematically forgotten and, nowadays, even contradicted in many instances. We need to inculcate this truth to children as early as when they can understand and appreciate it. Then let’s give them the example of how it is lived. 

 God’s will is the source of everything in the universe. The whole of creation in all its existence, unity, truth, goodness and beauty starts from God’s will and is maintained by it. The entire range and scope of reality—be it material or spiritual, natural or supernatural, temporal or eternal—is “contained” there, not only theoretically but in vivo. 

 We have to learn to live by God’s will that is shown to us, thanks to God, by Christ, the fullness of divine revelation, who left us with his word and the sacraments in the Church. 

 What is God’s will for us? In general, it is to love him and our neighbor. It is to love the way Christ himself has loved us. God’s will is that we continually pray, so we get in contact with him in a direct and intimate way. We have to know him more and more by reading the gospel and following his teaching, and developing a real love for him, complete with feelings. 

 We should just learn to convert God’s word into action. St. Paul has something very relevant to say about this. “Not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.” (Rom 2,13) St. James says something similar: “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” (1,22) 

 Christ himself lived by this principle, even at the expense of his own life. “I do nothing of myself, but as the Father has taught me...” (Jn 8,28) And in the agony in the garden, he expressed that most eloquent submission to his Father’s will, “Not my will but yours be done.” (Lk 22,42) 

 We need to understand that our whole life is a matter of conforming ourselves to God’s will, the very seat of our ultimate identity as persons and children of God. This would involve the stages of knowing that will, believing it, then professing it and putting it into action. In short, receiving our faith, then turning it into life itself.

Assurance of our salvation

THERE’S a gospel acclamation in one the Masses of the First Week of Advent that gives us that assurance. It says: “Behold, the Lord comes to save his people; blessed are those prepared to meet him.” Yes, there is such thing as the second coming of Christ for which we have to be properly prepared. 

 This second coming of Christ is when he, the pattern of our humanity and the savior of our damaged humanity, will come again to make the final judgment on all of us, establishing the definitive and eternal Kingdom of God that is meant for us. Obviously, we have to prepare ourselves for it. 

 This attitude of waiting, expecting and making the proper preparation for the second coming of Christ should be learned by all of us. And we can do that by strengthening our belief that Christ is actually already with us. He is everywhere, around us and inside us. We just have to develop the habit of looking for him in order to find him. 

 Christ is already with us since he is the God who became man, identifying himself with us in all our conditions, even making himself like sin, the worst condition that we can be in, even if he himself has not committed sin. (cfr. 2 Cor 5,21) Yes, he identified himself with us so that we also can have a way of identifying ourselves with him. 

 We should develop the yearning, the longing, the passionate desire to look for Christ, so we may find him; and in finding him we may learn to love him; and in loving him, we get to identify ourselves with him. 

 And Christ is present everywhere. We have to learn to look for him and find him in the little ordinary things of our life—in our respective homes and communities, in our work, in the things that we use and handle, etc. We actually do not need to go far and to do extraordinary things to find him. 

 And most especially, Christ is present in the sacraments, especially in the Holy Eucharist. That is why we are encouraged by the Church to have frequent recourse to Holy Mass and Holy Communion. 

 In this regard, we have to learn how to go eschatological, for which we have to know what it means and how we can acquire its sense. It’s a necessity in our life, since it gives a bigger, if not complete picture of our life. It enables us to go beyond the here and now to enter into the world beyond death. 

 Eschatology is that part of theology concerned with death, judgment and the final destination of the soul and humanity itself, that is, heaven or hell, or the so-called the Last Things. It may sound scary at first, but it actually is very helpful. We just have to make the necessary adjustments in our attitude toward it. 

 So, it’s a part of theology and not a merely empirical science. We need to have inputs of faith which actually play a directing role in the study. We cannot simply rely on so-called observable data, material or sociological, that by definition cannot fathom the spiritual and supernatural dimensions of our life. 

 It shows us that how we live our earthly life has eternal effects on our afterlife. We have to learn how to live our earthly with the view of our eternal and supernatural destination.