Giving our all to God

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

IN this year’s celebration of the Feast of the Queenship of Mary, the gospel reading reminds us of that time when Christ was asked what the greatest commandment was. (cfr. Mt 22,34-40) We know very well what Christ said.

“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment,” he said. Then, without being asked what the second greatest commandment was, he volunteered to say, “The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law ad the prophets depend on these two commandments.”

What is clear is that to truly love, we have to give our all or learn to leave everything behind to pursue our real goal in the same way Mary gave her all. The net effect should be a burning and abiding zeal of love for God and everybody else.

We have to be wary of our tendency to fall into some kind of lukewarmness in our relation with God and with others. This state of spiritual lukewarmness can be manifested when we fall into some feeling of mediocrity in our work, or into a condition of sluggishness, passivity, complacency.

Lukewarmness is actually self-love. It’s just an exercise in self-seeking. It’s not real love. It’s not the love God has meant for us, the one he shares with us, the one Christ referred to when he commanded us to “Love one another as I have loved you.” (Jn 13,34)

Thus, lukewarmness distorts love. It’s loving not in God’s terms but in one’s own exclusive terms. It’s a loving that springs from one’s self-justifying reasons.

It always likes to mask itself as loving, and is skillful at it. That’s why, not only can it hold a person hostage, it can effectively captivate peoples and societies and cultures.

We should try our best to be burning with love for God and for others. Everyday, we should be seized by that urge to “carpe diem,” to kind of strike while the iron is hot. If we have faith, each day brings with it its own adventure orchestrated by God in his abiding providence, and we are invited to it since we are supposed to be co-agents with God in our life here.

To be sure, our life here on earth is never just an interplay of our plans and the other natural forces. God is very much in it, a fact that we have to be more aware of, and more importantly, better skilled in handling. We cannot go on unmindful of this fundamental truth.

We should not be afraid to enter and take most active part in this drama with God and others, because even if it involves everything and all sorts of trials and difficulties, it is always worth it. This is what our life is really all about. We avoid making a fiction of our life, deluded by its false images.

To top it all, if we have faith and trust in God, we know that in spite of passing contradictions, what we actually get involved in is always something for the good of all of us in all aspects of our life, from the most personal to the most global.

We know that with God, everything will always work out for the good. (cfr. Rom 8,28) Even our mistakes and failures, and even our own sins no matter how big, if handled with faith and treated properly, can occasion greater developments in our life.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com