Personal sanctity always involves the apostolic duty

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

THAT’S how we have to understand our duty to pursue personal sanctity without let-up. It will always involve the apostolic duty because sanctity is not only about one’s own holiness. It is also concerned about the holiness of everyone else.

The word “personal” should not be understood as simply to be on one’s own. To be a person, gifted with the faculties of the intelligence and the will, enabling us to know and to love, means to be always related to others, first to God, ideally, and then to everybody else. A person is not meant to be isolated from everybody else. That would be an anomaly.

And so, when we are seeking personal sanctity as we should, since it is the ultimate purpose of our life here on earth, we should see to it that it is very much involved in helping the others seek their sanctity also. And if the pursuit for personal sanctity should be constant effort, so should it also be with respect to carrying out our apostolic duty.

Thus, when we talk only of our own struggles involved in the pursuit for sanctity without any mention about what we are doing with respect to our apostolic duty, that pursuit for personal sanctity would be hanging on air. It may present very dramatic episodes but it would be hollow and would miss the real goal.

To be holy is to have the very mind and heart of Christ, to have the very spirit of Christ. As such, it would inescapably participate in the very mission of Christ which is the salvation of humanity. Christ is not only the embodiment of holiness. He is also our savior. If we are to be like Christ, as we should, then we should be both holy and apostolic, intrinsically involved in the salvation of mankind.

We then have to realize that we just don’t do apostolate as if it is just one more task to be done on some parts of the day. We are first of all apostles, and our apostolic concern should be constant and abiding, even while we are asleep or doing all kinds of tasks during the day. We have to learn how to convert everything in our life as an occasion and material for doing apostolate.

Our lifestyle should somehow reflect the kind of life or relationship that exists among the three persons of the Blessed Trinity. If we are God’s image and likeness, and if God is three persons in one in perpetual relation and communion with each other, then we too should somehow channel the same life of continuing relation and communion with God and with everybody else.

Of course, we would find this ideal impossible. But that is a given. We are not expected to really achieve it with our own efforts alone. What we are expected is to try and try to pursue this dual goal of personal sanctity and apostolate, because as St. Paul once said, “He who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” (Phil 1,6)

We should just believe what our Christian faith teaches us even if we do not quite understand it fully. That is exactly what faith is all about. It is about believing beyond what we can see and understand. As the Letter to the Hebrews puts it: “Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” (11,1)

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com