Our Mission at Home and in the World

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

WE have to realize that we all have a mission in this life. It’s a common mission to seek personal sanctity that always goes together with doing apostolate. It starts with oneself, then in the family and eventually should cover as far as possible in the world.

We can somehow draw this conclusion when we meditate on the hidden life of Christ with Mary and Joseph in Nazareth. To be sure, that hidden life is as divine and with redemptive character as the public life of Christ. It gives us the idea that right where we are, usually at home and in the places of our work, are where we can find God and where we can start to carry out our duty of personal sanctification and apostolate.

We have to realize more deeply that given the way we have been created, our homes not only have a natural purpose but also a supernatural one, with these two dimensions vitally linked and mutually affecting each other.

It’s for this reason that we should try our best to make our homes always throbbing with the spirit of love, understanding, concern for one another, etc. We should try our best to make it bright and cheerful which should be the effect of a working life of faith, hope and charity in God. In fact, we should make our home a prefiguration of the definitive and eternal home meant for us with God in heaven.

And from the home, we should all try to leaven the world with the same Christian spirit. This is very doable, because what is needed first of all is the intention to do so. We may not be doing something with big public significance or some external manifestations, but with the little ordinary things that we do everyday and done with faith and love for God and for others, we can already effectively leaven the world.

In short, we can be an active Christian leaven if we unite ourselves with Christ always, if we unite whatever we are doing, no matter how technical, mundane, and of low worldly value, with the continuing redemptive work of Christ. We can always do this uniting business, since all we have to do is to will it.

We should not take for granted the great leavening power of the little things that we do everyday. We may not see the direct connection between these little things and the sanctification of everyone in the world, but for sure the amount of faith and love with which we do these things have great sanctifying effects on everyone!

It will be Christ, more than us, who would do the job. Ours is simply to cooperate with him, since Christ works through human and natural means, without detracting from the supernatural means that he can always avail of.

On our part, what is needed is heroic fidelity to Christ which is usually lived in the performance of our usual work and duties. In fact, we have to understand heroism mainly in this regard, for very few and far between would be the occasions where we can live heroism in the extraordinary events and circumstances of our life.

If we understand this point very well, then we would also realize that our own sanctification, which will always require some heroism, can be achieved through the faithful and loving performance of our ordinary duties of everyday.

This is what would truly comprise as leavening the world. By doing with heroic faith and love for God and others the ordinary little things of the day, we can attain our ultimate, supernatural and eternal goal in life!

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com