Our Need for Accompaniment and Continuing Conversion

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

WE have to be more aware of this crying need. More than that, we have to come up with plans and strategies that would effectively address this need whose neglect has spawned a lot of scandals even among supposedly “good” people like the clergy and other religious leaders.

We cannot deny that even if we can consider ourselves as already quite mature, so gifted with impressive personal qualities that would make us believe that we can easily tackle the different challenges and trials we meet in life, we actually continue to have weaknesses that can act up in some hidden way.

We should never forget that despite our spiritual and moral strength, we will always have the so-called “feet of clay” (cfr. Daniel 2,33) which means that our earthly and human powers are actually unstable. Just a little disturbance of a temptation, falling into sin would just be a matter of time.

Besides, we have been warned that even a just man can fall seven times in a day. (cfr. Prov 24,16) St. Paul also said that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Eph 6,12)

And given the new challenges posed by the new developments around, like the Internet where good and evil play absorbing albeit confusing games, we cannot deny that our weaknesses, while dormant so far, can start to stir up and dominate us.

What can make things worse is when we would just keep our struggles and falls in secret. That’s when we would put ourselves in some hidden bondage. These cases of secret or hidden bondage can arise in the area of our human weaknesses. Thus, people can have this enslavement to pornography and sex, to drinks and drugs, or worse, to some evil spirits who can appear to them, as St. Paul warned us, as an angel of light. (cfr. 2 Cor 11,14)

In cases like this, the most important thing to do is to pray hard, offer a lot of sacrifices, and then open up with someone who can help those affected spiritually and morally. And if needed, some professional help from psychologists or psychiatrists who have good human and Christian formation may be availed of.

This is when we really wound need accompaniment and conversion. Accompaniment should be exercised in the higher and more important aspects of our life—mental, psychological, moral and spiritual, etc. In these aspects, we can never say that our need for it would already be fully satisfied. In fact, the older we get, the more experienced and accomplished we are in our life, the more would be our need for accompaniment.

And that’s simply because the challenges and trials we face as we get older and more accomplished become more subtle and complicated. And we always need the help of others to face them. Woe to us if we are left only to ourselves to face all of the challenges and trials in life.

We have to realize that that we need to be accompanied always by others as well as to accompany others. We should be both sheep and shepherd. There’s both an active and passive side of this need of ours for accompaniment. If we do not feel that need yet, then it is about time that we develop an abiding sense of that need.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com