By Fr. Roy Cimagala *
IT’S intriguing to note that when Christ sent out his
disciples in pairs to prepare his coming to the different towns, he
commanded them to “carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals, and to
greet no one along the way.” (cfr. Lk 10,1-9) He is actually telling
them not to worry so much about these items because in the end he will
take care of them.
Such words of Christ can only remind us that we should
always be trusting of the ever powerful and merciful providence of God
who governs all of his creation with absolute effectiveness no matter
how much we mess up things.
Yes, we may experience some privations, some losses, etc.,
in our life, but if we stick with God, we know that everything will
always work out for the good. (cfr. Rom 8,28)
With all the things that we have to contend with in this
life, we certainly need to have a healthy sense of trust in God’s
loving and wise providence, abandoning ourselves in his will and ways
that often are mysterious to us and can appear to be contrary to what
we would like to have.
A healthy spirit of abandonment in God’s hands is necessary
even as we exhaust all possible human means to achieve our goals or
simply to tackle all the challenges, trials and predicaments of our
life. We should never forget this truth of our faith.
In this life, we need to acquire a good, healthy sporting
spirit, because life is actually like a game. Yes, life is like a
game. We set out to pursue a goal, we have to follow certain rules, we
are given some means, tools and instruments, we are primed to win and
we do our best, but losses can come, and yet, we just have to move on.
Woe to us when we get stuck with our defeats and failures,
developing a loser’s mentality. That would be the epic fail that puts
a period and a finis in a hanging narrative, when a comma, a colon or
semi-colon would have sufficed.
We need a sporting spirit because life’s true failure can
come only when we choose not to have hope. That happens when our
vision and understanding of things is narrow and limited, confined
only to the here and now and ignorant of the transcendent reality of
the spiritual and supernatural world.
It’s only when we are properly detached from the things of
this world and trust in the powerful providence of God that we can
develop the ideal apostolic zeal. To develop our zealous apostolic
concern surely entails sacrifice. We should not be surprised if in
pursuing it we are challenged, faced with difficulties and asked to do
self-denials and other forms of sacrifice.
We just have to hold firm on our Christian conviction,
together with the continuing petition for God’s grace and the generous
discharge of our human effort, that to do apostolate is the will of
God. He is bent in accomplishing it. It’s his first concern to contend
with the difficulties. Ours is simply to cooperate.
We have to continually ask ourselves if our thoughts and
desires bear an eminently apostolic character. If not, let’s
immediately do the necessary adjustments and corrections.
We have to embark also on a life-long effort to acquire
apostolic skills—how to make friends and deepen that friendship, how
to pursue full blast the supernatural apostolic goal of our life while
respecting our natural conditions, etc.
* Chaplain Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City
Email: roycimagala@gmail.com
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