We are children of God

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

WE have to develop the awareness and the conviction that we are truly God’s children, meant to share his life, since we have been created in his image and likeness. Despite the tremendous disbelief this truth of our faith tells us, we just have to do whatever we can to achieve that awareness and conviction and so to act and live accordingly.

This truth of our faith is highlighted in the prologue of the Gospel of St. John where it talks about how things were at the beginning of time when God in all his eternity decided to create man. Despite the human arrogance to reject God, God did not turn his back on all of us.

As the gospel narrates, “He (Christ) came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him. But those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man’s decision but of God.” (Jn 1,11-13)

This basic truth of our faith about ourselves behooves us to develop what may be called the spirit of divine filiation, precisely the belief that we are God’s children. We need to develop this spirit of divine filiation. While it’s a result of divine grace, it’s also something we have to work out. We need to load ourselves, to borrow a mobile-phone term, with a boosting awareness that we are God’s children.

We can go to the extent of psychologizing ourselves into it, repeating the expression until it becomes our breath and heartbeat and drives our stream of consciousness, enabling us to go deeper into its meaning, to instill its character into our thoughts, will, feelings and deeds.

This certainly would not just be a psychological exercise, for it is based on something real, not invented, though it’s a reality that can be accessed not so much by our senses and our reason alone as by our faith.

This point, I believe, is worth reiterating. It is what truly grounds us to the foundation of our life and nature, giving us the meaning and purpose of our existence. It’s a source of joy, confidence and serenity. It tells us what our filial rights and duties are.

More importantly, it tells us who we are and gives us an abiding sense that we are never alone, or worse, just on our own. It fills us with the conviction that we are children of God, that no matter what happens God will always be with us unless we reject him.

In other words, our life, whether considered in its purely natural aspect or in its supernaturally oriented spiritual dimension, that is, particularly our Christian life, is by definition a shared life.

I think we need to be reminded of this fundamental truth about ourselves, since there are now many tricky factors around us that tend to undermine this important character of our life. They make us think our life is just our own.

It’s heartbreaking to see that because they don’t have this sense of divine filiation, many souls fall into what we may call as Dickensian Great-Expectations syndrome, where one feels he is succeeding and prospering in life when in reality he is being impoverished and corrupted inside.

But I must also confess that I’ve met a good number who, precisely because of their faith and simplicity, enjoy the true blessings of this spirit of divine filiation.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com