How to follow Christ

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

CHRIST said it clearly. “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For he that will save his life, shall lose it; and he that shall lose his life for my sake, shall find it.” (Mt 16,24-28)

The self-denial asked by Christ is not of the kind that leads us to our self-annihilation. Far from it. It will rather lead us to our self-fulfillment. It is asking that instead of our own selves, we should have Christ as the center of our attention always, the very core and substance of our consciousness. We need, of course, to exercise our faith to live by this divine indication.

And the reason is simple. Christ is the very pattern of our humanity in its original state and the redeemer of our damaged humanity. It’s him in whom we can have our ultimate fulfillment, our true and lasting joy and peace. That’s why Christ said he is “the way, the truth and the life” for us. We cannot go to God, our Father and creator, except through him.

We have to be wary of certain ideologies, cultures and lifestyles that tend to replace Christ as the cause of our self-fulfillment. Sad to say, these appear to be proliferating these days. We have to learn to do battle with them.

The self-denial asked by Christ will obviously require a lot of effort and sacrifice. That’s because we have to contend with our tremendous tendency to stick to our own selves—our own ideas, desires, ambitions, etc. Besides, this tendency is constantly reinforced now by the many allurements of the world, not to mention, the tricks and wiles of the devil himself.

But again, we can be sure that all this effort and sacrifice is all worth it. We need to do everything to wean ourselves from our own selves and start to rely on Christ completely. That absolute reliance on Christ does not annihilate us. It will simply bring us to our most perfect and ideal state. We should have no doubts or qualms in pursuing that ideal.

Indeed, we cannot deny that we have to make sacrifices if we want to follow Christ and reap some fruits of sanctity and apostolate in our life. Self-denial is necessary since we often put ourselves in conflict with God’s will and ways. We prefer to do our own will.

Let’s do everything to develop this habit, if not, an instinct of abiding self-denial so that our mind and heart can only be open to the will and ways of God that often are shown to us through the needs of the others.

This habit of self-denial would enable us to do God’s work while being easily flexible and adaptive to the varying challenges and circumstances of the times. We have to be wary of our tendency to be trapped into some closed system of routine, if not to be imprisoned in our comfort-zone.

Self-denial will obviously involve certain detachment from things. That is why we should intensify our union with Christ as we immerse ourselves in the things of this world. We can do that if we know how to pray always, converting everything into a form of prayer, a form of engaging ourselves with God.

For this, we certainly need to train ourselves and to acquire a certain discipline, so that our union with Christ would be kept alive. We have to realize that our life is supposed to be always a life with Christ and for Christ.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com