Time for refocusing
We have just started the season of Advent. And with it, we begin another liturgical year, a specific aspect of time that reminds us we are in union with Christ in his person and his redemptive work in spite of our weaknesses and sins, through the sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist.
No, we have not been left orphans because of the death of Christ. He resurrected and ascended into heaven. He now sits at the right hand of his Father, and yet he is also with us here. It’s a mystery, a truth we cannot fully understand or explain. It’s God’s love that makes all this a wonderful reality.
Our life here on earth is a continuing cycle of beginning and ending. And if we follow by our Christian faith, these cycles are meant to catapult us to eternal life, in heaven, where…
“God shall wipe away all tears from their (our) eyes, and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more, for the former things are passed away,” (Rev 21,4) and where “the gates shall not be shut by day, for there shall be no night there.” (Rev 21,23)
On the more human level, Advent is the preparation for Christmas that, thank God, still holds a palpable mystique over us. God knows that whatever crisis we may be in, we manage to feel different and special when it comes.
It’s just that we have to make Advent not merely a time for worrying about the material aspects of the preparation. We need to enter into its true spirit, a deeply meaningful one that gives us the sensation we are being brought home again, regaining our true bearings as God’s children.
Advent should be a time of longing for Christ. Truth is as we go through the years, we often lose our Christian footing for endless reasons and factors. We get distracted, we get tempted and many times fall into sin. We can succumb to spiritual lukewarmness, and other worse things can follow.
In fact, we can even say that in spite of the over-all world progress in the sciences and technology, we still remain Jurassic in the field of the spiritual and supernatural realities of our life. It’s an unbalanced, monstrous picture of our human development.
We feel awkward at praying. We don’t understand why we need to make sacrifices. Oceanic loopholes and gaps clutter between what we profess and what we do. We’re good at intentions. But many times we are failures in deeds.
Advent is appropriate for correcting these anomalies. It’s a time for self-corrections, atonement and reparation. It’s also a time to strengthen our spiritual life and tighten our focus on what is absolutely necessary.
I think that’s the main challenge most of us have these days. With an explosion of things coming our way and asking our attention, we need to be most discerning, prudent and competent in integrating all the elements in their proper hierarchy.
For this, we can take comfort in the example of Christ. He came to save us by re-creating us. He came to put back everything to where it truly belongs—God. He was and continues to be involved in everything, I suppose, including our business and politics and all our earthly affairs.
Yet in the Gospel, it is clear that he refused to have to anything to do with certain things though they are good in themselves. He only rejected temptation and sin outright.
He did not get involved in politics. He did not like to be made king. He declined to be a judge in a dispute between brothers concerning family inheritance.
He made that distinction between what is Caesar’s and what is God’s, and though he rendered his duties towards both, he definitely focused on the things of his Father.
Clearly, he observed a certain scheme of priorities that made him refuse to do certain things though they are good. This is what we need to develop in ourselves—a sense of priority that would guide us everyday in organizing all our activities and concerns, seeing to it that we really do God’s will.
For this, we need to train ourselves to be discriminating in the many options presented to us daily. We have to learn how to say “no” to certain things if only to focus on what is truly necessary.
I feel this is the character Advent these days is proposing to us.
(Fr. Cimagala is the Chaplain of Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City. Email: roycimagala@gmail.com)
