Preparing for the future

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

I am very happy to note that there are serious agencies that are concerned about preparing people, especially the young ones, for the future. They are talking about the need for upskilling and reskilling them to cope with the demands of the future.

What is more, they are providing pertinent training programs as their way of walking their talk. They have programs, for example, for critical thinking, creativity, entrepreneurship and analysis, etc., that definitely will be helpful to them as they enter a fast evolving and very dynamic world.

The other day, I made a quick overnight visit to some relatives in Manila and spent some time bonding with my nephews and nieces who are already young professionals and the little ones.

Frankly, I was amazed at the way these young ones are now—very knowledgeable about technical things and full of self-confidence. But at the back of my mind was the question whether they would know how to relate themselves and the things that they do to God.

My fervent wish though is that together with these indispensable technical skills is the more important ‘skill’ of relating everything to God. We should not just remain in the practical and technical levels, since everything would just end up of no value when God is not involved.

In fact, God has to be the prime motive and the ultimate goal of all the new skills people today have to learn. He should not be exchanged for something merely technical, material and temporal. Rather, these material and temporal things should be the means for us to get to God.

We all should learn how to offer everything that we are, that we have and that we do to God. Our work, for example, should not just be a technical affair with purely earthly and temporal goal. It has to be an expression of our love for God, our way of adoring, praising and thanking him.

To be sure, everything can be related to God, since everything comes from God and belongs to him. And if we follow the example of Christ, we would know that all our earthly affairs can and should be an occasion or means to relate ourselves to God.

Even our mistakes and sins, if we have the faith and the proper attitude, can be an occasion to go to God who is full of mercy and compassion. Going to him with repentance will surely draw his forgiveness and will bring us back to his good graces. There is really nothing in our life that cannot be related to God.

This basic truth about ourselves and our life should always be in our mind. The real problem we have is when we ignore God or when we are indifferent to him, which is just one step away from going against him.

There is indeed a great and urgent need to make especially the young people aware of the importance of God in our lives. Everyone has to know how to relate themselves and everything in our lives to God. I believe this is the great challenge facing all centers of learning.

To prepare people for the future, we need not only reskilling and upskilling the technical things, but rather and most especially the spiritual and moral aspects of our life. We need to find ways of how to effectively train people to be with God right in the middle of their technical work.

For this, we cannot underestimate the importance of a certain plan of life that should include first of all some acts of piety and a program of continuing spiritual and moral formation.

Yes, we should learn to spend some time daily in prayer and meditation, in getting to know more about God through reading the gospel and other spiritual books. We should have recourse to the sacraments, etc.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com