The serious duty to prepare

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

“What did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom Scripture says: Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, he will prepare your way before you. I tell you, among those born of women, no one is greater than John; yet the least in the Kingdom of God is greater than he.” (Lk 7,26-28)

This tremendous praise made by Christ to St. John the Baptist can only highlight the most important task St. John has done in the whole economy of human salvation. And we have to realize that that task somehow is also ours. We have to realize more deeply that we have the serious duty to prepare ourselves for the ultimate purpose of our life, which is none other than to be ‘another Christ.’

We have to help one another in the pursuit of this real goal of our life without getting confused, entangled and lost in our earthly affairs. If ever, these earthly and temporal affairs only serve as means and constant occasions to aim at that goal. They are our pathways to heaven and to God, to share in his divine life as we are meant to do.

We should be very clear about this basic truth about the world in general or about the whole of nature that has been created by God. We need to realize that as God’s creation, the whole world of nature has been imprinted with God’s laws that are meant to give glory to God and to lead us also to him, giving him glory as well. In other words, depending on how we see the world, it is actually a pathway to heaven, to God.

Everything that we discover and make use of in the world should lead us to ask ourselves whether what we are discovering is truly in accordance with God’s will, to his true designs of the world, and whether we can discern how they can be used to give glory to God, which is a matter of loving him and serving the whole of humanity.

We have to be wary of the danger of discovering and using things simply in accordance with our own understanding of them and also to our interest only. This is a common and abiding danger that we have to be most wary about. We have to do everything to avoid and overcome that danger.

Thus, we have to develop that strong and deep attitude of always referring things to God before we put our hands on them. That way, we would be putting ourselves on the right track that hopefully will lead us to God and to see and use things the way they should be seen and used.

This attitude, of course, would require us to be guided always by our Christian faith, instead of just being guided by our human estimation of things. And for that faith to be effective in us, we obviously need to be humble. Without humility, there is no way faith can have any effect on us.

We should be looking for God always in everything that we get involved in. In all the things that we do or handle, we should be asking what are there in those things that are for God, rather than being interested only in what are there in those things that are for us.

This basically is what would comprise as our proper duty to prepare for our ultimate end.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com