Some eschatological considerations

By Fr. Roy Cimagala *

          WE should not be surprised that as we end the liturgical

year, the readings of the Mass these days focus on the end times. They

are not meant to scare us but rather to encourage us to be properly

prepared and to really lock our attention on what are truly essential

in our life. This is when we have to make what we can refer to as some

eschatological considerations.

          We have to examine ourselves on how prepared we are to meet

our death, which some saints have affectionately called as “Sister

Death,” because if we go by our Christian faith, death is actually

just a transition from our earthly life of being created and redeemed

by God to our definitive eternal life with God who wants to share his

life with us, we being his image and likeness, his children.

Talking about proper preparation, we have to realize that this is none

other our spiritual preparedness. It is what gives us the full picture

of our life and destiny, opening ourselves to a supernatural life with

God. We are no mere creatures of nature. We have been made in the

image and likeness of God, elevated to be children of his in Christ.

          Our spiritual preparedness takes us to a higher ground,

giving us a glimpse of what is beyond our human horizons and natural

limits. This is not to mention the corrections it will make to our

inadequate if not erroneous understanding of our life here on earth.

          It affords us an apocalyptic worldview, because it unveils

and reveals, which is what apocalypse means, the true meaning and

purpose of our life. In other words, with this kind of preparedness,

anything can happen in the world, and we can still manage to come out

safe and sound, in the ultimate sense of the words.

          As a consequence of pursuing our spiritual preparation, we

need to learn how we can relate our earthly and temporal concerns to

our ultimate spiritual and supernatural goal. In short, we have to

know how to connect time with eternity.

          We have to overcome our narrow-mindedness or blindness with

respect to the spiritual and supernatural goal of our life, because no

matter how much we ignore it, we cannot deny the fact that the full

dimensions of our life go beyond the temporal, the material and

natural. We are also meant for the eternal, spiritual and

supernatural.

         And the way to do that is simply to live as fully as

possible, in the richness of their practical implications, those

divine gifts of faith, hope and charity. All the other human virtues

and values that we pursue in our life here on earth should be animated

by these theological virtues.

          It is through these gifts of faith, hope and charity that we

get connected with God who actually always intervenes in our life

since he is still creating and redeeming us. We are still a work in

progress. We are not yet a finished product. Our correspondence to

God’s abiding interventions in our life is through these virtues of

faith, hope and charity. This is how we can connect our time with the

eternity of God.

          The fact that we can think and reason out, wish and desire,

choose or not, love or not, are clear indications that we are not

meant only for the here and now, the tangible and the worldly. We go

beyond them.

* Chaplain Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com