Living the life in the Spirit

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

GIVEN the fact or the basic truth of faith about ourselves that our life is a life with God, and therefore, is not only natural and human life, but is also a supernatural life, we have to realize more deeply and abidingly that our life ought to be a life in the Spirit.

In other words, that our life should be animated first of all with the Holy Spirit, the spirit of God that makes us children of God in Christ, that makes us “alter Christus” (another Christ). It should not be a life animated simply by natural elements and principles.

Let’s remember that before he went up to heaven, Christ told his disciples: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows him…I will not leave you orphans…” (Jn 14,16-18)

We should let these words of Christ sink deep in our consciousness and form the conviction that whatever happens in our life, God in the Spirit will always be with us. We have to reinforce this conviction constantly both in good times and especially in bad times. We are never alone! God is always around!

We have to feel very much at home with this very wonderful reality and start to correspond to it as we ought. We have to go beyond our earthly dimensions and enter into the more fascinating world of the spiritual and the supernatural.

This does not mean that we escape from our earthly reality to be in the spiritual and supernatural reality. No. It means that while being deeply immersed in our mundane conditions, we also have to learn to go beyond them to be with God. This is what the word ‘transcendence’ means.

To be sure, we are enabled to do that, because of our intelligence and will. These are powerful faculties that would enable us to know and to love, and eventually to enter in the lives of others and ultimately to be with God.

And one secret that we can use to develop this life in the Spirit is precisely to give some spiritual and religious consideration or meaning to every act we do and to every situation, condition and circumstance we can find ourselves in.

We need to develop the proper attitude, skill and habit of giving spiritual and supernatural considerations to everything that we think about, say and do, so that we can really say that we would always be with God. That is the ideal that we should try to actualize.

One way among many other ways of doing this is to make use of the psalms which are inspired words that express the proper spiritual and supernatural attitude and reaction we ought to have to anything that occurs in our life.

Of course, we have to study and meditate on the psalms well so that we can internalize their real meaning and imbibe the spirit behind the words. We have to know the psalms that are relevant to every act we do and to every situation we can find ourselves in.

But more importantly, we are always given the grace so that our capacity to be with God is actualized. It’s not enough that we are enabled to know and love God. That potency has to be put into act with the grace of God who gives it to us in abundance.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com