A Proactive, Not Reactive, Fidelity

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

HAPPY EASTER to everyone! Once again, we celebrate the final victory of Christ over our sins and their consequences. That’s what his resurrection, achieved through the instrumentality of the cross, means. We should all be moved to correspond to this BEST NEWS we could ever have in the best way that we can.

And that can mean, first of all, a sharpening of our sense of vocation to holiness and apostolate, and to spread that sense of vocation to everyone. Truth is everyone has a vocation because everyone is called to holiness and its accompanying duty of doing apostolate. This thing about vocation should never be treated as something very special, meant only for a few. It is meant for all!

And once we have that vivid sense of vocation, let us exert all the effort, with God’s grace which will always be abundantly available, to be as generous and heroic as we can in our fidelity to it, come what may.

In this regard, it would be good to realize that our fidelity should be something proactive, and not just reactive. We have to be both, of course, but between the two, it’s being proactive that is more important, since that would clearly show that we are truly driven with love, that there is growth and development in our life, that we are exercising our creativity and sense of initiative.

Being reactive is, of course, important too, otherwise we would be regarded as dead or, at least, insensitive. But being reactive comes more of an instinctive action. We cannot help but react and respond in some way to any stimulus that would come our way, be it small or big. In fact, we have to react if we, at least, want to be aware of what is happening around us.

It’s in being proactive that we have to pay more attention and where we have to train ourselves more. We are notorious for our tendency to fall into routine, and from there into complacency and passivity. We should not allow ourselves to be trapped by routine.

If we truly love God and everybody else, with a love that is nothing less than a participation of the love God has for us and as commanded by Christ to us, then we will never say enough in our self-giving. It will always be proactive, always looking for new frontiers in our own sanctification and in our apostolic activities.

Even if such attitude would already seem to be going beyond common sense, our reason and other human and worldly standards that we usually use to measure our love, we would still go on giving ourselves, never saying enough. We would just give and give, even if we seem to consume ourselves till death.

This is, of course, an overwhelming prospect, but that is what true love is. It is some kind of madness that knows no limits. It is given without measure, without cost, without any calculation.

Our fidelity should be inventive, innovative, creative, versatile and adaptive to all the conditions we can find ourselves in. This can happen, at least to some degree, if we truly strive to be close to God, to follow him and conform ourselves to him.

We should never get stuck at a certain level of loving, no matter how successful we already are at that level. Life continues to demand more things from us, and we cannot afford to be contented at any point. Love requires more always. There will always be new challenges, new openings, new needs, given the changing temper of the times and of the people.

This is the Easter spirit!

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com