Let’s learn to recognize the voice of Christ

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

“My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand.” (Jn 10,27-28)

What reassuring words of Christ that also contain a duty that we have to carry out faithfully! If we truly want to be with Christ as we should, we have to learn to recognize his voice, since he is actually always intervening in our life. We have to be the sheep that hears Christ’s voice all the time.

And we can effectively carry out this duty if we have that attitude of always looking for Christ in everything that we do. In fact, Christ himself said that we seek first the kingdom of God, and not to worry so much about our temporal and worldly needs, because all these will also be provided by him as long as we look for Christ first.

This looking for Christ should be our basic attitude that should guide us daily and give shape to our day. Our life should be characterized by an attitude of looking forward, of watching and expecting, clarifying and pursuing our intentions, and being ever hopeful.

We need to realize then that we have to take utmost care of our intention, making it as explicit as possible, and honing it to get engaged with its proper and ultimate object who is God.

We should try our best to shun being simply casual or cavalier about this responsibility. We can easily play around with it, since intentions are almost invariably hidden from public knowledge. We are urged to be most sincere in directing our intentions properly.

We can easily fall into hypocrisy and deception, doing what can appear good externally but is not internally, since we could refuse giving glory to God, which is the proper intention to have, and instead feed and stir our vanity, pride, greed, lust, etc.

We need to actively purify our intentions, since we have to contend with many spoilers in this regard these days. In fact, we just have to look around and see how openly opposed many people are of directing their intentions to God.

To them, intentions are strictly personal and confidential matters that others do not have any right to meddle. While there is a certain truth to this claim, we have to remind ourselves that our intentions too are subject to God’s moral law for us.

Our intentions can only have at their core the love of God, the giving of glory to God. As St. Paul once indicated, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatsoever else you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1 Cor 10,31)

We therefore have to be most careful in handling our intentions. They play a strategic role in our life, for how and where we direct them would determine whether we want to be with God or simply be with our own selves.

Our intentions express who and where in the end we want to be. Do we choose God, or do we simply choose ourselves, or the world in general? It’s actually a choice between good and evil.

Even if we are not aware, or refuse to be aware, of this choice, which is usually the case, the choice between God and us, between good and evil is always made with every human act we do.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com