By: Fr. Roy Cimagala
I MEAN it’s God’s work, first of all, before it is ours. This business of our creation and redemption is begun by God and he also will be the one to complete and perfect it. On our own, we cannot. Neither did we begin it nor will we be able by ourselves to complete it. Only God began and will finish our creation and redemption.
Our creation and redemption can be likened to a joint effort between God and man because we have been created to be like him, able to know and love. We are meant to cooperate with God in our own creation and redemption.
Thus, while God will do everything to complete our creation and redemption, we also are expected to cooperate. It’s like a 100%-100% proposition, even if our all-out cooperation can never compare to God’s efforts.
This is a proposition that goes beyond mathematical laws since we aren’t dealing here with quantifiable elements. In this latter system, the law that is followed is the all-or-nothing rule.
This means that the 100% we are supposed to give is not a 100% exclusive of God’s 100%. It’s 100% that reflects and channels God’s 100%. A 100% that is homogeneous, not heterogeneous, to the 100% of God.
In short, this 100%-100% proposition expresses the ideal proper to us in that we should try our best to achieve a total identification with God through Christ in the Holy Spirit. We should do everything with God, beginning and ending things with him.
From another angle, we can say that whenever we try to do all we can to resolve our temporal affairs, we should try to approximate our total identification with Christ who redeemed us by his death on the cross. We have to be ready for the cross which, whether we like it or not, cannot be avoided in life.
Christ didn’t simply preach and perform miracles and amaze crowds with his words and cures. He went all the way to offer his life, showing us that his love for us is to the extreme. He was willing to assume all our sins even if he himself didn’t commit any.
Every time, therefore, that we do our “all we can”, making use of whatever astuteness and cleverness we have to handle our earthly affairs, we should be keeping Christ more alive in us.
Far from separating us from Christ, our active involvement in the things of the world, if done properly, keeps us close to Christ. The world is no obstacle in our relationship with God if we keep this 100%-100% proposition in mind.
And even if our 100% cannot be compared to God’s 100%, we should just be reassured by what Christ told us; that the little we do, if done with love for God, can acquire tremendous power and produce abundant fruit.
Yes, with a little help from us the full wonder of God’s grace would be revealed to us. This was articulated by Christ himself when he compared the Kingdom of God to how a seed grows. (cfr. Mk 4,26-34)
“It is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land and would sleep and rise night and day and the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how. Of its own accord, the land yields fruit, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once, for the harvest has come.”
Email: roycimagala@gmail.com
