The instinct of seeking God always

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

WE need to cultivate this instinct. It does not come automatically through the working of our biological make-up. It requires the grace of God and our effort. And for that, we have to learn how to deal with the interplay of the supernatural, natural and infranatural forces that are at work in us.

Yes, we need faith, the grace of God, plus the attitude of humility and obedience on our part to be able to feel the need to seek Christ always in our life. We also have to learn how to be guarded against our weaknesses, temptations and the sins and mistakes we commit that would definitely spoil our effort to seek God as an instinct.

It’s always God who makes the initiative for us to have this instinct of seeking him always. But we have to try to be discerning, receptive and responsive to this reality. And this can only happen if we are first of all humble enough to acknowledge that we are not our own being.

That is, that we just did not come from our own parents and the long line of our ancestry. Nor did we just come into existence in some spontaneous way. All of us and everything else in existence have a beginning. This consideration should lead us to the realization that we and everything else must have come from a being who has no beginning, who has always been existing from all eternity.

This is when we can start to realize that there must be a God who is responsible for the creation of the whole universe. And as we try to know more about him who reveals himself to us in various ways and continuously, we would eventually get the picture of who we really are, what we are supposed to be, and how our relation with God should be.

This is when we can feel the need to seek Christ and to be with him always. He is actually everything for us. We need him more than we need air, food, etc. He is our basic need because not only are we just any creature of his who needs him for existence, but we are the most special ones since we have been created by him in such a way that we become his very image and likeness, meant to share his very life and nature.

If we only would realize this basic truth about ourselves, then there is no doubt that we would feel the need to be seek him and be with him all the time. We just cannot be on our own. And by being with him, we would avoid drifting aimlessly in life. We would have a complete picture of the purpose of our life and of the whole universe.

For this to take place, we should understand that our freedom is best exercised when it is used to seek God first and always. We would realize that we are actually given a choice of whether we choose to be with God or simply to be on our own.

What can help us in this is when we learn really to have a personal and intimate relation with God by means of prayer and the other practices of piety, especially the reception of the sacraments. We would also feel the need for an appropriate means of continuing formation, considering that we often find ourselves inconsistent, vacillating and irresolute in our resolve and commitments.

Let’s hope that we can truly develop this instinct of seeking God always.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com