At every breath and heartbeat

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

THIS is the ideal condition in our lifelong pursuit of holiness and its accompanying duty of apostolate. The desire for it should be, as much as possible, felt and acted on at every breath and heartbeat.

Impossible? No doubt. We can even say it’s crazy to even think about that ideal. But let’s remember that we are not meant to take up this most important duty of ours by relying only on our human powers. We need God himself. As Christ himself said: “With God, nothing will be impossible.” (Lk 1,37) His infinite power and ability, which he is ever willing to share with us, is able to overcome any obstacle or human limitation.

The challenge now is for us to learn to be as receptive and responsive as we can to God’s sharing of his powers. We should just relish this truth of our faith. God wants to share what he has with us. He takes the initiative.

That he created us without us, endowing us with all sorts of things, foremost of which are our spiritual faculties and the grace which is already a participation in his divine life, are proofs of this tremendous truth of our faith.

And the best proof of this truth of our faith is the fact that God himself in the Son became man not only to be with us, but also to share with us in our wounded condition and showing and sharing with us “the truth, the way and the life” that is proper to us.

It’s no presumption for us to think that God wants us to share his life, his nature and his powers. In fact, at one point, Christ said, “All power is given unto me,” (Mt 28,18) and then empowered his apostles to go and preach the gospel to all nations.

Indeed, Christ shared his power with his apostles and, by extension, with all believers. This power was not meant to be stored or hoarded, but rather to be used extensively to further the Kingdom of God of which we are all meant to be part.

We need to feel at home with this tremendous and incredible truth of our faith and start to do whatever we can to make that truth active in our life. We should also realize that this sharing of Christ’s powers and authority is not for one’s personal gain or prestige, but rather to further God’s work on earth.

We can actually have a taste of this sharing if, guided by a strong faith with its corresponding practices of piety, like regular prayers and meditations, reception of the sacraments, constant ascetical struggle, etc., we convince ourselves that we are meant to pursue holiness and apostolate at every breath we make, at every beating of our heart.

We have to realize that every moment, whatever the situation and condition may be, is an occasion and reason to seek holiness and carry out the duty of doing apostolate. This is what love truly is in its distilled form. We should just do our best to be faithful to this truth of our faith.

There will be doubts, fears, awkwardness along the way, and temptations, mistakes, failures and sins can still come to us, but if our faith is strong and deep enough in what God is actually giving and sharing with us, we can make, like God and with God, the impossible possible!

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com