Only with God…

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

TO complete the statement, it’s only with God when we can be right and do right. That’s the ideal condition of our life here on earth, and we should just do everything to pursue that goal which would mean our perfection and fulfillment.

Our life, whether we are aware of it or not, is a shared life with God. It’s God actually who, as our Creator, is always with us and is directing us toward our perfection through his providence. Ours is simply to follow him. We should be wary of our tendency to think that to affirm our true identity and to live out our true freedom, we should be just be by ourselves.

This basic truth about ourselves was somehow expressed by Christ when in his High Priestly Prayer he said, “Holy Father, keep them in your name whom you have given me; that they may be one, as we also are.” (Jn 17,11)

We have to learn to refer everything to God, always asking for his guidance so we may know how to follow what he is showing us amid the varying and often confusing conditions and circumstances of our life here on earth.

For this, we obviously need to humble ourselves so we would feel the need to go to God asking for guidance always, even if that guidance is always made available to us. We cannot deny that we are notorious for relying simply on our own knowledge and estimation of things as we carry out our tasks, tackle the different challenges and trials, hurdle the barriers that we encounter in life.

For us to see how God is guiding us, we definitely need to enliven our spiritual life that should be nourished by a life of prayer, sacrifices, ascetical struggle, recourse to the sacraments, etc. In short, we should have a plan of a life of piety that is kept going and growing by having a lifelong program of formation.

This formation should tackle the human, doctrinal, spiritual, professional and apostolic aspects of our Christian life. This formation would greatly help us to punctually discern what God is actually prompting us in every situation of our life.

Also helpful in this regard is to have recourse to spiritual direction and accompaniment with someone who can truly guide us. It is a good way of truly recognizing the voice of God and not easily deluded by other voices that can sound like God’s voice but actually are not.

These days, we have to be wary of the many imitations around that can mislead us. We need to have recourse to spiritual direction, choosing a good spiritual director who should be a true man of God, because we are poor directors of our own selves.

We can easily fall at the mercy of our own weaknesses which we should be humble enough to acknowledge. This is not to mention the many tricks of the devil and the allurements of the world that can imitate God’s voice, offering us sweet poison.

Definitely, to be able to discern and follow God’s continuing guidance over us, we need to practice restraint and moderation in our speech, sleep, idle mirth, etc. In other words, we should try to live as spiritual men, not just carnal men.

We should always remember that our life is not just lived in the level of the physical and material dimensions. It is not even lived in the social level in all its aspects—economic, political, historical, etc.

Our life has a prominently spiritual dimension that requires us to nourish the way we think, judge, reason and ultimately to love. These are the functions of our spiritual soul. It’s in this dimension that the supernatural aspect of our life enters.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com