Beware of the danger of worldly entrapment

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

Chaplain

Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE)

Talamban, Cebu City

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com

THIS worldly entrapment is actually a clear and present danger. But the intriguing part is that hardly anyone is aware of it. Many of us allow ourselves to be caught in the widening web of the modern technologies which, while offering us a lot of conveniences, also hook us into the dynamic of self-indulgence, with love for God and the others practically thrown out of the window.

We are reminded somehow of this danger in the readings of the Mass for Wednesday of the 3rd Week of Lent (Dt 4,1.5-9; Mt 5,17-19) where we are strongly told to give priority to following the commandments of God which actually give us the proper condition for us to be in this life.

In the first reading, a prophet told the people of Israel, “Give heed to the statutes and ordinances which I teach you, and do them, that you may live, and go in and take possession of the land which the Lord, the God of your fathers, gives you.” 

And in the gospel of the day, we hear Christ telling the crowd who followed him, “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them.” These words clearly tell us where we can find the fulfillment of the law proper to us—it’s in following Christ.

We should train ourselves to have as our abiding and strongest passion, as our most precious treasure, the need and urge to be intimate with Christ. We actually cannot afford to be without Christ. The only thing to expect in that condition is to get into some form of disaster!

This will, of course, require us a lot of effort, a tremendous dose of faith, hope and charity, to contend with our usual feeling of doubt and awkwardness with respect to this need of ours. But, to be sure, it would all be worthwhile! We just have to humble ourselves and remind ourselves to always pray, to always do things with Christ and for Christ. We should not take this most basic need of ours for granted.

We cannot deny that especially nowadays, the lure and the hook of worldly entrapment that has as its bait the many wonderful technologies we are having these days, can be so overpowering that we can feel helpless before this phenomenon. We really need a lot of discipline to put ourselves always in God’s presence and to consciously follow his will and commandments.

In this we have to help one another. We cannot afford to be casual anymore to this need. All around us are many cases of people in certain types of addiction, obsessions and other forms of bondage.

Even those who appear to be good and saintly-looking can be in the grip of some of these forms of bondage, usually hidden and well covered by all sorts of justifications and rationalizations.

It has to be made clear to everyone that what is proper to us is to have God first and everything else would just follow in their proper order of importance. Let’s never forget that we are meant to be always with God. Our life, given the way we have been created, cannot but be a sharing in God’s life and nature. To stay away from him would be a fundamental anomaly that would have bad consequences for everything else in our life.

We should therefore give priority to our spiritual needs of prayer, recourse to the sacraments, development of virtues, the habit of having the presence of God always, doing everything with God and for God, etc.