To Be All Things to All Men

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

THAT’S from a passage in 1 Corinthians 9,22. It’s the ideal condition for us to pursue. It’s what would truly identify us with Christ, the pattern of our humanity and the savior of our damaged humanity, who is the very embodiment of this ideal.

Though each one of us is supposed to be a unique person, there is also something in us, a certain faculty and power, that would enable us to reach that ideal. It’s the spiritual dimension of our life and nature, endowed with intelligence and will, that would enable us to transcend our distinctive and unique character in order to have a mind and heart with a universal scope.

To top it all, we also are given the very grace of God, a sharing of God’s power, that would allow us to be “all in all” (cfr. 1 Cor 15,28) as God is. We just have to be aware of these endowments and gifts, and learn how to make full use of them in accordance to God’s will and ways. We are capable of having a universal heart and mind.

Yes, we may have our own tastes and preferences, our own temperaments and personalities, our own views and opinions, our own charism and vocation, or whatever status we have, but we have the duty to reach out to everyone, especially those who are different from us or even are opposed to us. They can even be opposed to God.

In this way, we would be imitating Christ who was willing to bear all our sins, as St. Paul said, to save all men. (cfr 1 Tim 2,4) This is the only purpose that can bring about the development of a universal heart. Short of this motive, the ideal of a universal heart that is proper to us is compromised.

Toward this end, we have to learn how to be patient, how to rise above our personal things and learn how to give our heart to God and to everybody else. This obviously will require of us a certain sportsmanship, a certain toughness that is of the kind that can welcome and accommodate the charity of God in our heart. We have to learn to listen and not just hear others, to look and not just to see them.

We have to learn how to suffer with the others, how to be compassionate, how to make as our own the conditions of the others out of the love of God and souls. God himself did all these.

He made himself man in Christ to save us. And Christ, according to St. Paul, made himself like sin without committing sin (cfr 2 Cor 5,21), just to be with us and lead us back to God, from whom we came and to whom we belong.

So, in our dealings with the others, we should always be motivated by love. We have to take the initiative to love them and not wait for them to give reasons for us to love them. Even when they commit errors, all the more we should love them.

In the Psalms, we read that God “does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.” (103,10) If that is how God looks at us, that should also be how we should look at the others. We ourselves ask God not to judge us by our sins. Neither should we judge others according to their sins.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com