Correspondence
This essay is not about letter-writing or a certain type of distance learning, though I must say that what I have in mind must be the original from which these activities sprung.
I am referring to our constant correspondence to grace, actually a duty that we have to be more aware of and more adept in. It's actually a most indispensable duty without which Christian life would practically be a sham, no matter how colorfully we show our Christianity.
The basis for this duty is the truth that we are God's creatures who have been endowed with the dignity of being his children also, sharers in his divine life.
God is not content with creating us only. He made us very special, making us in his very image and likeness. This he did by giving us a spiritual nature, with our intelligence and will, that allows us to receive supernatural grace, that in turn elevates us above our nature to be able to participate in his life.
God's sharing his life with us is a permanent feature of our relationship, whether we are aware of it or not. This can only be broken in hell, when by our own sins we produce an irremediable rupture from him.
This point is worth reiterating, since a common thinking is that while it may be true that God created us, he already left us to be on our own after our creation. This thinking is called in philosophical circles as Deism.
Just to be direct about it, my simple dictionary describes Deism as “the belief, based solely on reason, in a God who created the universe and then abandoned it, assuming no control over life, exerting no influence on natural phenomena, and giving no supernatural revelation.”
Though not professed formally, it is in fact the attitude many of us have. And this has to be corrected, precisely because it is wrong.
God's relationship with us does not stop with creating us. While God continues to be present in all his creatures, he is especially present in us, and in fact he shares what he has with us.
This is what our faith teaches. After considering that the Son of God became man, called Jesus Christ, and that he offered his life for us, and through the Church and the sacraments remains with us—all this could only mean that he so loves so that he wants to share what he us with us.
We need to go back to this truth many times, to relish it and to engrave it more deeply in our heart so that it can truly shape the way we think, speak and act, so that it can truly shape our life.
We can presume that God never stops prompting us with his grace, precisely to share his life with us. But he does not impose himself on us. He waits for us to correspond to his grace freely.
The problem is that we most of the time ignore these uninterrupted promptings. We forget him, put him at the sidelines, and use him only as some kind of ornament.
Correspondence to grace is our effort to do our part in this relationship of love between God and us. It is supposed to be an existential relationship, lived moment to moment. We are not meant to be alone. We are meant to be with God always.
Thus, our intelligence and will, our spiritual faculties that open us the possibility of being elevated to share in God's life, should be properly focused. Their main and constant object is God, not just anything we want to know and will.
Using our intelligence and will to pursue only our own personal goals would be an abuse of these faculties, and sooner or later, disastrous consequences would start appearing.
This is the common sickness we have at the moment, so common that it looks like the normal thing to have. Unless focused on God, our faculties cannot resist the lures of what are known as the capital sins: pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony and sloth.
We always need to correspond to God's grace to the point that we can echo what our Lord once said: “I always do what pleases him (his Father).” (Jn 8,29) That should our attitude always.
(Fr. Cimagala is the Chaplain of Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City Email: roycimagala@hotmail.com)