When we’d just be chasing after the wind

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

Chaplain

Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE)

Talamban, Cebu City

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com

THIS happens when with all the excitement we put into our earthly activities, we fail to reach the ultimate end proper to us, and that is, to be with God, to do everything to show our love for him, and to give him glory. In other words, when we fail to follow what Christ once said: “Do not work for food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life.” (Jn 6,27)

We cannot deny that we are notorious for making ourselves, instead of God, as the goal of our whole life. We are prone to fall into self-indulgence against which we should declare an unrelenting war. Yes, this has always been a problem to us, and these days it is much more so.

With the many new wonderful things that can instantly give us convenience, comfort, pleasure and satisfaction, many of us are trapped into the very sticky web of distractions, obsessions, addictions and the many other forms of self-indulgence that feed on our weaknesses, like lust, pride, conceit, gluttony, unhinged curiosities, envy, etc., etc.

We just have to give a cursory look around to see how bad this problem is. Many people are just looking at their cellphones most of the time. There are reports saying that many young people often forget their meals and lose sleep because of what they do in the Internet. It’s clear they are terribly hooked there and it seems it’s now next to the impossible to get them out of there.

As a result, many duties and responsibilities are left unattended. Disorder and chaos are fast gaining ground as priorities are skewed. Superficiality has now become a mainstream lifestyle, reinforcing the trend toward consumerism, materialism and what Pope Francis refers to as the “throw-away culture” where ethical and moral considerations are ignored or even flouted, i.e., regarded with contempt.

We have to be wary of this danger of self-indulgence that is becoming widespread. There is a slippery slope to it. We should therefore be constantly guarded against it. For example, we can start going to the Internet for the legitimate purpose of getting information that we need. But along the way, we get distracted by something else that can appear to us as interesting. 

We take a bite, and then another bite, until we fail to realize that we are already getting entangled and hooked. It is like being hijacked. We lose our sense of direction, and before we know it, we would already have forgotten why we went to the Internet in the first place. We would be trapped in a state of obsession and addiction that can be so strong that it can defy rationality and common sense.

To counter this strong bad tendency of ours, we should see to it that our strongest attraction should be God and no other. If we make God the source and cause of all our attractions, of all our pleasures, of what ultimately gives us perfect satisfaction and ultimate fulfillment, all the other things can attract us and give us joy in the proper way, always respecting our true dignity as persons and as children of God.

Otherwise, there is no other way but for us to have merely a fake kind of joy, pleasure and satisfaction that can only lead us to bigger dangers. We really have to train ourselves to make God and to make following his will and ways the constant source and cause of our attraction and joy.