‘Blessed are those prepared to meet him’

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

IT’S a gospel acclamation during this Advent Season when we are made to prepare not only for the coming birth of Christ on Christmas Day but also, and more importantly, for his second coming at the end of time. Of course, we should also be prepared to meet Christ, our redeemer and judge, at our death when we are going to face him in our particular judgment.

Let’s internalize that Boy Scout motto, Be Prepared, and adapt it within the context of our ultimate purpose and end of our life. This is not meant to scare anyone, but the fact is that the end of time, the end of the world and our own death can come anytime. If we have some common sense, we should know that the natural thing for us to do is to be always prepared, since we would not know how much time we have left.

If we want to be realistic in our life, we should always be prepared for Judgment Day which can surely come anytime. In fact, we should go through our daily lives in pursuit of this most important moment when our eternal destiny is determined.

This may sound sobering to us, but it is actually meant to put us in the right direction of our life, avoiding the usual pitfalls of being confused, trapped and lost in our earthly affairs.

We are reminded of this truth of our faith in that gospel parable where Christ compared the Kingdom of heaven with a net thrown into the sea, collecting fish of every kind. (cfr. Mt 13,47-53)

As the parable narrated, once the net is full of fish, then a separation between the good catch and the bad ones is made. That separation is precisely the image of that Judgment Day when God will determine which of us deserve heaven.

Obviously, to be properly prepared for Judgment Day, we need to know in an abiding way the real and ultimate purpose of our life here on earth. For this, we need to strengthen our faith that only in God can we have the ultimate purpose in life. St. Paul said so: “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1 Cor 10,31)

This abiding sense of the ultimate purpose of our life will enable us to have a sense of unity and continuity among the different elements and the different occurrences in our life, be they good or bad, favorable or unfavorable to us, etc.

When we have love of God as our abiding sense of purpose in our life, we would find it easy to go from one thing to another, no matter disparate they are from each other. We would find meaning in everything, including what we consider to be human disasters in our life.

Also, the preparation we are asked here need not involve anything extraordinary. It is enough that whatever we do in our daily routine is done with God and for God. That way, we would always be motivated to do things in the best way that we can, leading us to be more and more like God. And even if we cannot escape the limitations and imperfections of our work, God will always understand and would be happy to see us working with that intention.

And so, it stands to reason that during the day we make many pit stops, so to speak, so we would know whether we are still on the right path, with the proper direction. That way, we would have the chance to rectify and purify our intentions.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com