By Fr. Roy Cimagala
THAT’S the ideal thing to do. Whatever be the events and circumstances of our life, whether happy or sad, a victory or a defeat, etc., we should be quick to relate them to Christ’s victory of his passion, death and resurrection. It’s a victory that can handle everything in our life properly. More than that, it’s a victory that will be definitive.
Yes, if we have a working faith, we know that all our affairs can take part in the victory of Christ over sin and death. Thus, we would have every reason to be happy and hopeful and to remain calm despite whatever. This is actually the ideal condition of our life, and we should try our best to attain it.
In that way also, we can be in a better position to see God’s will and ways, and to follow them properly. As we all know, we work or perform better when we feel light and animated by love, without as much as possible bearing the drag of a guilt feeling or anything negative.
Of course, we have to understand that Christ’s victory was gained through the cross, through his loving obedience to the will of his Father who wants him to assume all the sins of men, rendering death to all our sins by dying on the cross and then by resurrecting.
If we are guided by our faith, if we develop a theological mind and directed by it, we know that Christ has converted everything that is negative in our life into a way of our own salvation.
Everyday let us find ways of deepening our understanding and appreciation of this truth of our faith, and also of acquiring the capacity to live it as fully as possible, until we can truly say that we are finding joy in our suffering.
Let us often meditate on the passion, death and resurrection of Christ since it is from there that we can get the proper inspiration on this matter. Such meditation will wipe away any fear we may have toward any form of suffering in our life.
At least we can say that we would complain less when some suffering comes our way, or we would not lose our peace, would actually be game with any suffering, and our reaction to any form of suffering would go beyond the level of the senses and feelings, etc. We would get more and more convinced that going through some suffering would be doing a lot of good to us and to everybody else.
To train ourselves for this, we might have to actively pursue a plan of what is called as active mortification. We make a list of acts of self-denial and even of corporal mortification like fasting, abstinence and the recourse to ascetical instruments like the cilice and the discipline.
So, we just have to be sport and cool about the whole reality of suffering and death. What we need to do is to follow Christ in his attitude toward them. For Christ, embracing suffering and ultimately death, is the expression of his greatest love for us. We have to enter into the dynamic of this divine logic and wisdom so we can lose that fear of suffering and death.
Thus, we have to understand this very well. Unless we love the cross, we can never say that we are loving enough. Of course, we have to qualify that assertion. It’s when we love the cross the way God wills it—the way Christ loves it—that we can really say that we are loving as we should, or loving with the fullness of love.
What a lovely life we would have if we manage to relate everything to Christ’s victory over sin and death!
Email: roycimagala@gmail.com
