Keeping the vigil of Faith

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

THIS is how our life should be lived. No matter how brilliant and intellectually and naturally gifted we are, we should always be guided by faith, making it the abiding light of our life, otherwise we would miss the most important goal of our life.

Faith is God’s gift to us, his way of sharing the knowledge that he has about himself, about ourselves and about everything else. It is what would give us hope, confidence and sense of security as we journey through the valley of tears that our earthly life can’t help but be. It is what would give us joy and true love that can handle any situation and condition in our life.

An appropriate prayer that we can use in this regard could be the following: “Turn our eyes to seek the truth of your judgments, Lord, that, when our spirits are tried by fire, the anticipation of seeing you may make us rejoice in your justice.”

Or we can also repeat often some words spoken by different characters in the gospel like: “I believe, help my unbelief!” (Mk 9,24) or “Increase our faith.” (Lk 17,5) We can never say that we have enough faith. We should never be complacent in this regard. Faith is an ever-dynamic thing that needs to grow and grow as well as to inspire us more deeply, thoroughly and consistently.

We need to make it grow to cope with our natural needs. In this level alone, we always need faith to make things very clear for us, even if in theory we can handle the natural challenges and difficulties we can encounter in life.

We cannot deny that there are just too many of these natural challenges and difficulties for us to handle with a certain ease and confidence. Especially these days when the pace of development is faster, and the developments themselves are more complicated and tricky, we need the light of faith to see things properly.

Besides, it is faith that gives the ultimate meaning and proper direction to all our human knowledge and endeavors. It is what gives the original perspective to all events, good or bad, in our life. Otherwise, we would end up confused and lost.

We also need to make our faith grow to cope with the multiplying infranatural consequences of our human condition that is weakened by sin. There’s no other way to manage and survive the consequences of sin, ours and those of others, personal as well as the collective and structural, than by relying first of all on our faith. Without faith, we will find no exit, no relief from this wounded status of ours.

Also, we need to make our faith grow to cope with the tremendous goal of attaining our supernatural goal in life, that of becoming the true image and likeness of God in which we have been created. Our human and natural powers simply cannot handle this aspiration. It would require nothing less than God’s help which starts by giving us the gift of faith which we have to receive and make full use of.

We should not be surprised that life and all the challenges and trials we are going to face in it will always demand from us things beyond our powers and resources. And that’s simply because we are meant to go to God for all our needs, without neglecting any effort we can give along the way.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com