Our basic identity as apostles

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

Chaplain

Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE)

Talamban, Cebu City

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com

WHEN Christ chose his 12 apostles, (cfr. Mt 10,1-7) we have to realize that if we want to be true believers and followers of Christ, we too should feel called to be apostles of his. We too should feel the need to continue helping him in his work of human redemption all throughout time.

While this divine call for us to be his apostles will take time and effort to be effective in us, we on our part should try our best to realize that we are all given that call and that we have to correspond to it as early as possible.

That’s because if we are truly Christians, we should be involved in Christ’s mission here on earth. Christ’s mission and concerns should also be ours. We have to realize that Christ treats us the way he treats himself precisely because we are patterned after him.

That’s also why we have been endowed with intelligence and will which, together always with God’s grace, would enable us to know and love others the way Christ loves us. And in this regard, we know that Christ’s love goes all the way to offering his life for us. That’s how we should love one another. That’s how we as apostles of his should be willing to love everybody, including our enemies.

We have to realize that we just don’t do apostolate as if it is just one more task to be done on some parts of the day. We are first of all apostles, and our apostolic concern should be constant and abiding, even while we are asleep or doing all kinds of tasks during the day. We have to learn how to convert everything in our life as an occasion and material for doing apostolate.

To be an apostle is an integral and even essential part of our identity and dignity. Even on the basis of our being human persons, we cannot help but be apostles because we are supposed to be constantly concerned and responsible for everyone. We are all related by the mere fact that we are human beings with intelligence and will, enabled and mandated to know and love each other.

That fundamental reason is even reinforced when we consider that we are creatures of God, made in his image and likeness. The Trinitarian life of God, which is a life of total communion among the three persons and which we are supposed to reflect in our own lives, urges us to always sharpen our concern and love for one another.

Still more, if we are to consider that we believe in Christ and are followers of his, then we will realize that we ought to have the same desire Christ had, which is the salvation of all mankind. This should be the primary motive we ought to have in our relation with others. We should be most interested in their salvation and spiritual well-being. All other human and temporal motives only play a secondary and instrumental role.

Thus, our life can’t simply be a life in pursuit of personal sanctity without doing apostolate. These two go together inseparably, mutually affecting each other to put us in the right track in our life. We do apostolate as we breathe.

We need to keep that apostolic zeal burning, fueling it with prayers, sacrifices, apostolic plans and initiatives that should bank on some traditional means as well as the new things like the new technologies that can do a lot to foster our apostolic activities.