From our earthly to our heavenly image

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

ONE liturgical prayer I met sometime ago went this way: “Grant, we pray, almighty God, that we, who have been renewed by paschal remedies, transcending the likeness of our earthly parentage, may be transformed in the image of our heavenly maker.”

I found that prayer very meaningful, for, indeed, it is our lifelong endeavor to transform ourselves from simply being our natural selves to becoming the ones God has meant for us—that is, to be like him, sharers of his life and nature.

Again, it’s a tall order, and if seen only with our natural powers, an impossible quest. But we just have to convince ourselves, by activating our faith, that in fact everything has been given to us so that we can be what God wants us to be.

It’s just a matter of how obedient and docile we are to everything that God, who is our Father more than just our Creator, has provided for us. Even in our worst condition, he has given us a way out, a remedy. He is willing to do everything to bring us back to him. He sent the Son, the 2^nd person of the Blessed Trinity who is God himself, to become man to redeem us, offering us the “way, the truth, and the life” meant for us.

We just have to go on moving in pursuit of our ultimate goal. We for sure will encounter difficulties and experience mistakes, failures as well as commit sin along the way. But we should just get up and begin again without saying “that’s enough.”

God is ever forgiving, even if we may already feel that we are abusing his mercy. God understands that. All we have to do is again to humble ourselves, and ignore the distracting insinuations of our reason not guided by faith, or worse, the insinuations of the devil whose only intention is to block our way toward God.

This, of course, would involve a certain dying to oneself so that the beginnings of the divine life meant for us would start to take root again. In this, Christ was very clear. He once said, “Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” (Jn 12,24)

We have to learn how to make this “dying in order to live” a reality in our life. This can only mean that instead of simply guided by our own will and knowledge of things, we should let our will conform to the will of God as much as possible. That way, we can share his power over sin and death.

This is going to be a lifelong struggle, of course, since we all know that we have the strong tendency to just be guided by our own will. We think that by doing so, we are exercising our freedom, not realizing that true freedom can only be achieved if our will follows the will of God, the very author of truth and freedom himself.

It’s for this reason that Christ clearly said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” (Jn 14,15) This should be the main principle we have to follow in our lives. We should convince ourselves that outside of that principle, we would be going nowhere. But with it, we can expect to arrive at our final goal: to be one with God through Christ in the Holy Spirit!

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com