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By Fr. Roy Cimagala
Chaplain
Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE)
Talamban, Cebu City
Email: roycimagala@gmail.com
IN the gospel, there is a part where Christ drove out the demons from a possessed man but was accused by some leading Jews of driving out demons by the prince of demons, an obviously self-contradicting reasoning. (cfr. Mt 9,32-38)
On this occasion, Christ did not waste time defending himself. He proceeded instead to go around all the towns and villages, teaching in the synagogues, proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom, and curing every disease and illness.
This should also be our reaction when we encounter some contradictions in our efforts to do some good. We should just proceed to do a lot more of good. Let those who misunderstand us bear their own misunderstanding. Of course, if we have some time, we may do some gentle and charitable clarification or correction. But we should not lose sight of what is most important for us to do.
In the same gospel, it is said that when Christ saw the big crowd to be given attention to, he was moved with pity because he saw them like being troubled and abandoned, like a sheep without a shepherd.
That’s when he made this appeal to his disciples to “ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest,” because as he said, “the harvest is abundant but the laborers are few.”
Indeed, this is always the situation in our earthly life. It’s a big and continuing challenge. There are endless people to reach out to bring Christ to them, and those who have to do that very important task will always be few and limited.
We just have to realize that everyone of us, if we are to be consistently faithful to our Christian identity, is called to carry out this task. Thus, we have to realize more deeply that all of us actually have a vocation, since all are called to share in Christ’s mission to save all men.
We should all be concerned about this matter. We need to develop a sense of vocation, for the simple reason that everyone has a vocation. We come from God and we belong to him. He always calls us to himself and offers us a way to go to him.
The way to go to him, peculiar to each one of us given our different situations in life and God’s specific plan for us, is the vocation God gives us. We therefore should try to discover that vocation as early as possible and correspond to it as fully as possible also.
To be sure, no one comes to existence by mere accident nor by pure chance and divine caprice. God does not create us at random. Even a person who is considered unwanted by his parents or is conceived through rape is already a person planned and loved by God from all eternity. This is a fundamental truth about ourselves that we should never take for granted.
Thus, we should try to develop this sense of vocation as early as possible. And this can mean as early as when one is still a child, already beginning to be aware of what and who he or she is. This normally should start in the family, with the parents playing a major role in this affair since they are our first teachers here on earth.
The parents should be quick in sowing the seeds of this sense of vocation by making the child aware that he or she just did not come from them but from God. And that he or she also belongs to God. This basic truth should always be reinforced all throughout the process of bringing up and educating the child.
