Living the mystery of God
This is a truth not yet well-known, let alone, lived. In fact, a good number of people dispute this assertion. They can drive away believers with a savage barrage of scorn and ridicule. Are you nuts, they can say, to believe there’s more to our life than how our biology and sociology define it?
Our life is not just physical or biological life. It’s not just economic or political life. Not even is it intellectual life, no matter how rich it is. It is a life entrenched in the life of God, our Creator and Father, who continues to intervene in our life. Our Christian faith teaches that God gratuitously wants to share what he has, including his life, with us.
Our life cannot be other than a life taken up in the overwhelming truth, the mystery of God’s life. For Christian believers, this is because we are made not simply with the DNAs of our parents, but in the image and likeness of God.
Even a philosophical or scientific analysis of our nature can readily reveal we are designed and outfitted to enter into a relationship with others, and ultimately with God.
That we can think and know, choose and love, means we are meant to get engaged with objects outside of ourselves. We are meant for others. We are meant to believe and love, more than to simply think and feel.
We are God’s children, first and last. We are God’s children before we are our parents’ children. Our relationship with God enters a much more intimate, defining and abiding character than what our relationship with our parents can attain. Our parents can only influence us so much. God intervenes in our life always.
From our parents, we inherit a lot. We also depend a lot on them. But we are quite independent of them. From God, we get everything. On him, we depend for everything. And while we have a certain autonomy, we can never be independent from him, unless we choose to in a definitive way upon our death.
The task we have is how to correspond to this tremendous reality of living our life within the whole mystery of God’s life. Many of us still think that we are quite by ourselves, and the decision to relate ourselves with God and others is purely optional.
No, sir. Our relationship with God, while an option—in fact, a fundamental option—is never optional, something we can feel quite free to have or not to have. We would be incomplete without God.
We need to be more aware of this marvelous truth. And from there, to start the lifelong journey of conforming our life to that of God, overcoming first our initial human awkwardness in the face of our supernatural goal, and then developing the virtues that little by little resemble us with God.
It’s a process of always conquering new frontiers and defending our fronts from the enemies of God and of our soul.
May it be that our thoughts are also God’s thoughts. And may our words and actions not be just our words and actions, but also God’s. That’s how we are meant to be!
On God’s part, everything has been provided for us to reach the goal. He always gives us his grace. He sends us the Holy Spirit, our sanctifier with his gifts and fruits, so that we can concur with God’s actions and designs.
We’ve been given God’s word, a living and definite revelation so we can enter into the mind of God. We have been given the sacraments and the Church itself, so that God continues to be with us and in us in a very direct and abiding way while still journeying in this earthly life.
We have to do our part to reciprocate God’s providence over us. We need to develop a theological mind, thinking always in terms of our faith, and not just with our reason and senses. We have to aim at nothing less than being contemplatives, able to see God in everything and everything through the eyes of God.
I’m afraid we are still light years away from this ideal. But if we put our mind together, we can achieve what is really meant for us. We just have to be aware of what is involved and consistent in putting into action what we know and realize about our life, thanks to our faith, regardless of the difficulties and mistakes.
Let’s live the life of God!
(Fr. Cimagala is the Chaplain of Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City. Email: roycimagala@gmail.com)