Living Our Christian Faith Consistently

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

WITH all the rapidly evolving developments we are having these days, we need to learn how to live our Christian faith consistently. This can indeed be a big challenge since this is practically like breaking a new frontier where things are still new and quite exacting.

To be sure, it’s not only how to level up our technical skills that is involved. The more challenging part is how to live our Christian faith consistently so we can avoid getting confused and lost, trapped in some kind of bubble, and learning how to make use of these developments to pursue our real and ultimate purpose in life.

To attain that consistency and unity in our life, there is no other formula than to follow the example of Christ. He should always be the reference point in all our actions and in all the different situations in our life. He should always be the guide and the standard. After all, he is the very pattern of our humanity and the savior of our damaged humanity.

He teaches us how to blend the different aspects of our life, how to have a universal outlook, and how to blend the old and the new, the traditional and the innovative, so that everything in our life, no matter how different and even in conflict, can be properly resolved, even if it involves tremendous sacrifices.

With respect to the little and the big things in life, we should realize that while it’s true that we have to take care of the little things in our life, we should not forget that we are not meant to get detained there. We should always relate the little ordinary things in our life to the big and ultimate purpose of our life.

The same with the human and the spiritual and the supernatural dimensions of our life. Anomalies in this area can happen when in our confessions, for example, we accuse ourselves only of our failures to do our prayers, to offer sacrifices, to attend some daily Masses, etc., without mentioning how we have fared in our graver duty to do apostolate, to Christianize our work and society in general, to reach out to the poor and the needy, to be forgiving of others who may have wronged us, etc.

Among the things that we can do to counter our tendency to get accustomed to things and to fall victim to the desensitizing effect of complacency, routine and lukewarmness are the daily effort to make a good examination of conscience, a monthly recourse to a day of recollection, and a yearly spiritual exercise called a closed retreat.

These are good occasions to look more closely into how our spiritual and moral life has been faring, and to see, in a manner of speaking, what parts of our spiritual and moral life need to be cleaned up, oiled, or perhaps changed, revised or reengineered to adapt to changing circumstances.

We need to sharpen our desire to do these things because given our weaknesses, we usually do not like to do them. We should not forget that we like to enjoy more than to exert effort. Laziness and comfort-seeking is a legacy of our fallen nature.

These exercises can actually bring us to an indescribable sense of adventure, since we will realize sooner or later that there are many new things that are truly helpful to us and are waiting for us to discover. These new things would give us the sensation that we are flowing with the times, not stuck at a certain corner of time or a certain mold of culture.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com