By Fr. Roy Cimagala
IN that gospel episode where Christ complains about the inconsistency and hypocrisy of the leading Jews at that time (cfr. Mk 7,1-13), we are reminded of the danger of being trapped in our earthly affairs and in our human ways while neglecting what is truly important for us.
“This people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts. You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition,” lamented Christ. (Mk 7,6-8)
We have to be most wary of this danger because especially these days we have to contend with powerful forces that can easily absorb us while desensitizing us from the most fundamental duty of ours to do everything with God and refer everything to God. Sad to say, many people these days do not anymore know what the real purpose of our life here on earth is. They are hooked in their self-indulgence.
How many people these days, especially the young ones, are addicted with their cellphones to such an extent that they lose sleep and proper rest and get exposed to many dangerous, unhealthy stuff like pornography? Getting distracted from their real duties seems to be the game of their life.
Seen from another angle, many of us seem to be simply playing the dynamics of materialism, consumerism, hedonism, etc. in our earthly and temporal affairs. God seems to have nothing to do with our life. The spiritual dimension as well as the supernatural goal of our life are practically thrown out of the window.
We have to recover the consciousness, sharpening it as much as possible, of the real and abiding purpose of our life. God wants us to be like him since he has created us to be his image and likeness. Our life here on earth is still God’s continuing creation of us. And he is testing us to see if what he wants us to be is also what we want ourselves to be.
Thus, we should see to it that everything we do, everything that happens to us should be seen, understood and reacted to in accordance to what God wants us to be. We have to follow what St. Paul once said, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” (1 Cor 10,31)
Let’s always remember that we always have a choice of whether we want to follow God or to follow ourselves in everything that happens in our life. We should see to it that we are always conscious of how this choice should be made so we would be guided properly.
In a sense, we are meant to be always in contact with God, since in the first place our life is meant to be a sharing in the life of God, if not in his very own divine nature itself. That’s how our life ought to be.
Our natural life, and everything in it, is geared toward the supernatural life of God. Everything in our life and in this world is meant to lead us toward this end. We have to develop a taste and even an appetite for the supernatural life with God and of things supernatural in general.
In this we have to help one another, because in the end, this is our common ultimate end in life—how to live our life with God, how we can be immersed in God even as we are immersed also in the things of the world.
Email: roycimagala@gmail.com
