By Fr. Roy Cimagala *
WE have to learn to look forward to the second coming of
Christ. That’s when Christ, the pattern of our humanity and the savior
of our damaged humanity, will come again to make the final judgment on
all of us, establishing the definitive and eternal Kingdom of God that
is meant for us. Obviously, we have to prepare ourselves for it.
This truth of our faith was implied when some leading Jews
once asked Christ when the Kingdom of God would come. To which, Christ
answered that “the coming of the Kingdom of God cannot be observed,
and no one will announce, ‘Look, here it is,’ or, ‘There it is.’ For
behold, the Kingdom of God is among you.” (cfr. Lk 17,20-25)
This attitude of waiting, expecting and making the proper
preparation for the second coming of Christ should be learned by all
of us. And we can do that by strengthening our belief that Christ is
actually already with us. He is everywhere, around us and inside us.
We just have to develop the habit of looking for him in order to find
him.
Christ is already with us since he is the God who became
man, identifying himself with us in all our conditions, even making
himself like sin, the worst condition that we can be in, even if he
himself has not committed sin. (cfr. 2 Cor 5,21) Yes, he identified
himself with us so that we also can have a way of identifying
ourselves with him.
We should develop the yearning, the longing, the passionate
desire to look for Christ, so we may find him; and in finding him we
may learn to love him; and in loving him, we get to identify ourselves
with him.
And Christ is present everywhere. We have to learn to look
for him and find him in the little ordinary things of our life—in our
respective homes and communities, in our work, in the things that we
use and handle, etc. We actually do not need to go far and to do
extraordinary things to find him.
And most especially, Christ is present in the sacraments,
especially in the Holy Eucharist. That is why we are encouraged by the
Church to have frequent recourse to Holy Mass and Holy Communion.
In this regard, we have to learn how to go eschatological,
for which we have to know what it means and how we can acquire its
sense. It’s a necessity in our life, since it gives a bigger, if not
complete picture of our life. It enables us to go beyond the here and
now to enter into the world beyond death.
Eschatology is that part of theology concerned with death,
judgment and the final destination of the soul and humanity itself,
that is, heaven or hell, or the so-called the Last Things. It may
sound scary at first, but it actually is very helpful. We just have to
make the necessary adjustments in our attitude toward it.
So, it’s a part of theology and not a merely empirical
science. We need to have inputs of faith which actually play a
directing role in the study. We cannot simply rely on so-called
observable data, material or sociological, that by definition cannot
fathom the spiritual and supernatural dimensions of our life.
It shows us that how we live our earthly life has eternal
effects in our afterlife. We have to learn how to live our earthly
life with the view of our eternal and supernatural destination.
* Chaplain Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City
Email: roycimagala@gmail.com
