When life gets tough

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

Chaplain

Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE)

Talamban, Cebu City

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com

GIVEN our human condition, marked always by all kinds of weaknesses, limitations, mistakes and other negative things, we should be ready to face and bear them, never by our lonesome, but always with Christ who is always around, ever ready to help us in many and often mysterious ways. We should develop the instinct to do this, training ourselves to always go to Christ especially when times get tough. 

We are somehow reminded of this piece of advice in that gospel episode where a leper, despite his condition and the big crowd he had to contend with, managed to approach Christ asking for healing. And true enough, without further ado, he was healed. (cfr. Mt 8,1-4)

There is just one thing we have to bear in mind when we carry out this advice. We should see to it that our plea for help from Christ should not just be in pursuit of some personal convenience or advantage. 

While that may be the immediate motive, the constant and ultimate motive should be that we would like to be like God, sharers of his life and nature, as he wants us to be. When God gives us what we ask, our sense of gratitude should make us progress in our pursuit to become like God.

We should always remember that every event and circumstance of our life, whether good or bad in human terms, is meant to test us if we want to be like God as we should or we would simply want to be by ourselves.

The same is true when we ask for forgiveness for our sins which in the end is more important than just healing of some health issues. The contrition or repentance we have to make for our sins should be the perfect one, not the imperfect type. 

In the latter, we would be sorry for our sins because of the ugliness of our sin. We would be sorry for our sins so we can feel good about ourselves. In the former, we would sorry for our sins out of love of God, out of our desire to be more and more like God as we should.

While we would always be forgiven even if our contrition is imperfect, that kind of repentance would sooner or later spoil us and would not give us the grace to avoid the same sins for which we are asking forgiveness. It may even lead us to a subtle kind of spiritual pride and vanity that is worse than the material or external one.

We should try our best to make a perfect contribution that will keep us humble and in need of God always, never daring to be simply on our own. With perfect contrition, we continue to make our journey toward heaven. With imperfect contrition, we somehow make a stop along the way which can open us to some dangers.

It’s important that we purify and rectify our intention when we ask for forgiveness for our sins. For this, we need to do some practical and relevant exercises, since we have to contend with subtle enemies that can undermine our desire to make a perfect contrition.

Nowadays, those of us who simply make imperfect contrition when we go to confession, cannot help but fall to the same sins again and again. That’s because the grace of real, deep and thorough conversion has not been received properly.