The little things as a way to God

By Fr. Roy Cimagala *

MAKE no mistake about this. The little, ordinary things of our daily life can and should be pathways to reach and be with God. This truth of our Christian faith has been amply proclaimed by Christ in many of the parables he used to describe how the kingdom of God is.

“This is how it is with the Kingdom of God; it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land and would sleep and rise night and day and the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how,” he said (Mk 4,26-27), practically telling us that the heaven can be reached through the daily routine we have.

Still more, he said, “To what shall we compare the Kingdom of God…it is like a mustard seed that, when it is sown in the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth. But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.” (Mk 4,31-32)

We have to be strongly reminded that God is everywhere and is always intervening in our lives. He is actually directing our life toward himself, since that is will for us, as it is for all his creation. He is never absent in our life, even in our worst moments. He is always solicitous of our needs, giving us light and strength, and showering us with his love that also teaches us how to suffer the unavoidable troubles we will have in this life.

The challenge for us is how to correspond properly to this truth of our faith, to this reality of our life. Again, we cannot overemphasize our need to spend time to develop a contemplative spirit even while immersed in our worldly affairs, so that we can always be in God’s presence and know how to correspond to his abiding interventions. 

And so, we can be sure that Christ is always in our daily routine and in the little, ordinary things of our daily life. We have to learn how to perceive the divine in the mundane. We have to learn to find Christ in the little things which comprise most of our day, if not of our whole life. 

Let’s always remember that Christ is God made man. As God, he is involved in our creation, in our getting into existence. As such, since its existence is involved in creation, he cannot withdraw from us, since by doing so would be like God withdrawing from our existence. Since we obviously exist, ergo, he is in and with us by the very fact of our existence.

As God and man, he is our redeemer, the one who, in a manner of speaking, would redo or re-create us after our original state of humanity has been damaged by our sin. 

As such, since we all need to be redeemed at all times, he neither can withdraw from us, since by doing so would be like God-and-man, Jesus Christ, withdrawing from our redemption. Since we need to be redeemed always, Christ is also always with us. He actually cannot help but redeem us, because of his great love for us.

We need to be more aware of this reality about ourselves, since we often do not realize it, dominated as we are with the merely material and sensible realities and with what is the here-and-now and what is immediately felt. We many times fail to go beyond this level.

* Chaplain Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com

Never belittle the little things

By Fr. Roy Cimagala *

IN the gospel, the Kingdom of God is often compared to the little things. Christ

said that the Kingdom is like “a mustard seed that a man took and planted in the

garden. When it was fully grown, it became a large bush…” Again, he said that the

Kingdom is like “yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of wheat

flour until the whole batch of dough was leavened.” (cfr. Lk 13,18-21)

These words have no other purpose than to tell us that the magnificence of

heaven can be reached through the little ordinary things of our day as long as we

handle or do them with faith, hope and charity.

We need to reconcile ourselves with this happy truth of our faith that we do not

have to wait for extraordinary circumstances for us to reach heaven and even to have a

taste of it even while still here on earth. With the little, ordinary things in our life, we

have all the means and chances to have heaven within our reach.

Sanctity, our ticket to heaven, certainly requires heroism, even to the point of

martyrdom. But we can be sure that by being consistently loving in doing the little things

of life, especially when they are hidden and unappreciated humanly, we would already

be very heroic indeed, even approaching the level of martyrdom.

What we have to do is to learn to find Christ in the little things which comprise

most of our day, if not of our whole life. Another way of saying it is to learn to refer

everything to Christ, no matter how little or insignificant it is.

We should always be with Christ at every moment of our day, offering things to

him, asking him questions like, “Lord, how should I deal with this particular situation, be

it an exciting work, a boring and tiring moment, etc.?”

We should never dare to do things simply on our own. Especially when we find

ourselves in difficulties, in a quandary, in moments of temptation, etc., we have to go to

Christ as quickly as possible and cling to him as tightly as possible.

And we should never forget to thank him all the time, for such gesture connects

us with him in an abiding way. When we are with Christ especially in the little things of

our day, how can we doubt about having heaven in us while still here on earth?

We therefore have to learn to find Christ in everything, doing so not in some

generic, theoretical way, but in a specific, practical way, one that is abiding and active.

This, of course, is a great challenge to all of us, but if we believe in this truth and we try

to conform ourselves to it and to persevere in it, for sure we can achieve a certain

degree of success.

It should be something normal to all of us to feel Christ’s presence in all things,

especially in our little ordinary events of the day, and to correspond to that presence as

actively as possible. This ideal is not only for some people who we usually regard as

mystics and very special people.

We can always find Christ anytime, for what it takes is only an act of faith that we

try to pursue as far as we can. If we persevere in this effort, for sure, sooner or later we

can find Christ even in the most ordinary and even the ugly things of our life.

* Chaplain Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com