By Fr. Roy Cimagala *THAT gospel episode where Herod the tetrarch was perplexed
about Christ and was more disturbed than simply curious about him,
(cfr. Lk 9,7-9) reminds us that if we are to be like Christ, we should
be ready to be misunderstood and even hated.
Like Christ, we can be a sign of contradiction to some
people. We should therefore learn how to handle that condition the way
Christ handled his. It’s going to be an unavoidable feature in our
life, especially nowadays when there are many powerful and influential
people straying away from God’s will and ways.
In this life, in this world, we just have to be ready to get
dirty without compromising what is truly essential in our spiritual
life. Evil is unavoidable in this world, and we just have to know how
to deal with it, always focused on going toward our eternal destiny
with God in heaven.
We should not worry too much about the misunderstanding and
even hatred against us that we can provoke in others, because we have
been given all the assurances that if we are with God, everything
would just turn our right. The challenge now is how to handle the many
evil things that will always get mixed up with the essential good of
this life and of this world that all come from God.
Evil does not have the last word, unless we let it. It is
the good that will have the last word. And so we just have to learn
how to go through such things even to the extent of cooperating with
evil materially, not formally, if only to change things for the
better.
In this, we should look at Christ not only as the model but
also and most especially as the power to enable us to derive good from
evil regardless of all the dirt involved in the process.
St. Paul has something relevant to say in this regard. “God
made him who had no sin to be sin for us,” he said, “so that in him we
might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Cor 5,21)
That is why Christ allowed himself to take on all the
suffering so unjustly inflicted on him and ultimately to offer his
life on the cross to bear all the evil of our sins in order to conquer
sin and death itself with his resurrection.
We have to understand then that our life here on earth, if
patterned after that of Christ, cannot but get involved with the dirt
of evil. It would be naïve on our part if we think that Christian life
is pure clean living pursued in a sterilized environment as if in some
controlled laboratory.
In this, we have been amply warned by Christ himself. “In
this world,” he said, “you will have trouble. But take heart! I have
overcome the world.” (Jn 16,33) More graphically, he said:
“If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off
and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or
crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal
fire.” (Mt 18,8)
We just have to learn how to suffer, how to let go even of
some legitimate things if only to get what is truly essential. In
other words, we have to learn how to get dirty and how to suffer with
Christ.
* Chaplain Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City
Email: roycimagala@gmail.com
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