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By Fr. Roy Cimagala
Chaplain
Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE)
Talamban, Cebu City
Email: roycimagala@gmail.com
THAT’S practically what Christ wants of us as he said: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!” (Lk 12,49) Obviously, we can only manage to do that if we truly identify ourselves with Christ.
Let’s remember that Christ left us with a new commandment that summarized and perfected the previous commandments articulated earlier. And that is that we should love one another as he himself has loved us. (cfr. Jn 13,34)
And how did he love us and continue to love us? Not only did he empty himself who, being God, became man, nor did he simply preach the ultimate truths about ourselves and things in general, nor did he simply perform wonderful miracles. He went all the way to assuming our sins and conquering them by offering his life on the cross and by resurrecting!
To top it all, he makes himself present substantially for all time, especially through the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, offering himself as the Bread of Life so that even now we can have a taste of the eternal life.
We really need to level up our knowledge of this truth of faith, training our mind and heart to capture this wonderful reality that should fill us with joy and eagerness to correspond to his love, since love, by definition, automatically arouses in us to love also in return.
We need to train ourselves to love the way Christ loves us. It’s a tall order, of course, but we have our whole lifetime to learn how to love. We may not perfect it, and that’s understandable. What is needed is simply for us to try our best, since it will be God who will do the rest.
Remember St. Paul telling us, “He (God) who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Phil 1,6) We should not worry too much if our effort to imitate Christ in his love would sometimes be erratic. The important thing to do is simply to continue, to move on trying our best, never surrendering to the urges of our weaknesses and mistakes.
Yes, we are subject to certain conditionings that can slow down our self-giving. We have to contend with our temperament which will always have its erratic ways, our physical and health conditions, our surroundings, etc.
But we should never forget that whether we realize it or not we are all involved in the supernatural work of God here on earth, where his supernatural powers are also at play. In the worst scenarios in our life, we can always beg for some supernatural help from God to enable us to do what we are supposed to do.
Yes, there will be sacrifices and tremendous amounts of effort involved here. We should just train ourselves to develop, with God’s grace of course, the power to tackle the difficult situations in our life.
What can always help is that we avoid getting imprisoned in our own world and allow ourselves to simply be at the mercy of the state of our physical, emotional and mental condition. With our spiritual faculties of intelligence and will, plus of course God’s grace that will always be made abundantly available, we can transcend beyond these constraining elements.
So, we just have to use everything within our power to attain that ideal state of being always on the go, dynamic, eager to serve and to do things for everyone.
