Daily planning and strategizing

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

THAT gospel parable about a king giving a wedding feast to his son and invited many guests who, later on, refused to come (cfr. Mt 22,1-14), reminds us that we should see to it that we do not get trapped in our earthly and temporal affairs such that we fail to pursue the real purpose of our life.

For this, of course, we should make sure that more than anything else, we should be guided by our faith. But that guidance should be concretized into some effective plans and strategies so that we would always have a working sense of purpose in our life, knowing how to relate all the elements of our daily life to this ultimate purpose of ours.

We know very well, especially these days, how we can be distracted by many things, and later on get confused and lost. That’s when we simply would be at the mercy of worldly forces and the erratic and unreliable urges of the animal part of our humanity.

The ideal is that even as we immerse ourselves in the things of this world, as we should since the world has been entrusted to us to dominate as God mandated us, we should always have the sense of the eternal and the sacred. We should be keenly aware that we are not meant only for earthly goals but rather for the heavenly and eternal one.

In this regard, it is important that we all know how to pray, how to strengthen our faith, hope and charity, how to relate everything in our earthly life to the ultimate eternal life meant for us. We have to be eternity-ready, not just future ready, with the figurative go-bag always by our side.

This is not going to be an easy job, of course. But it can be done. In fact, it has to be done, no matter what the cost! Thus, we have to learn the art of making daily plans and strategies, consisting of certain practices that would always remind us of the eternal destination meant for us. These plans and strategies should help us keep our spiritual and supernatural bearing even as we occupy ourselves with our earthly affairs.

We have to understand that for us to live properly as a human person and as a child of God, we need to establish and continually reinforce our spiritual and supernatural bearing. This duty has priority over all the other duties we have in this life. We may call it the mother duty from where all our other duties and responsibilities, as well as our rights and dignity, spring.

We should do everything to establish, recover when lost and maintain this spiritual bearing and supernatural bearing. We should see to it that more than anything else, we should be guided by God’s will and ways that are shared with us through his gifts of faith, hope and charity. We just cannot rely on our own counsel.

Given the way we usually are, we really need to exert great effort to comply with this duty of keeping a spiritual and supernatural bearing in our life. Fact is we tend to rely simply on our own ideas, opinions, preferences. We easily allow ourselves to be swayed by social trends and fads, hardly questioning their foundations and orientations.

That is why we need some time everyday to do some deep thinking and reflection that should lead us to meditate on God’s word and works, and to pray, that is, to enter into conversation with God. Otherwise, we would not be able to enter the spiritual and supernatural dimension of our life. We would simply remain in the peripherals and the superficial aspects of our life.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com