What should be normal in us?

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

THE quick and short answer to that question is for us to be like Christ, to be “another Christ” (alter Christus), and even “Christ himself” (ipse Christus). This is what should be normal in us. It is not presumptuous of us not only to aim at it but also to assume such awareness now, even if it will always be an ongoing and tenuous affair all throughout our lifetime.

God, our Father and Creator, wants it that way, since he wants us to be his image and likeness, children of his, meant to share in his very own divine life not only in heaven but also while we are still here on earth, struggling in our way to reach our definitive eternal status in heaven.

It is not overbold of us to think that way. It, for sure, is not making ourselves fall into some psychological anomaly. It is what is meant for us. It is what is proper to us. In fact, to be like Christ would constitute the fullness and perfection of our humanity when everything that is good and proper to us is achieved.

It’s when we can faithfully channel in our lives the very essence of God which is love and all goodness as personified by Christ himself. It’s when we can echo St. Paul’s words: “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.” (Gal 2,20)

We have to start to feel at home with this ideal of normality that is meant for us. We have to overcome whatever awkwardness or, worse, unbelief and resistance we may have about it. For us to reach the fullness of our humanity, we just cannot depend on our human powers, no matter how impressive they may be in human terms. We just cannot depend on our intelligence, our ideologies, our political consensus, our sciences.

While we have to use to the hilt all our human powers, we have to see to it that they are animated by the very spirit of Christ who makes himself “the way, the truth and the life” for us. (cfr. Jn 14,6)

Let’s not allow them to work simply on their own, based and motivated only by what we see and feel, by what we understand through our intelligence that is not yet guided by our Christian faith. We need to exert effort to refer them to Christ and to be guided by him always.

This may require that we be always recollected in our activities. We should avoid just acting on instincts, on what we consider to be what comes naturally, what is commonsensical. Not even should we act according only to some social and cultural norms. All these, of course, have their valid and objective values, but they need to be animated properly by the spirit of Christ, otherwise they can only go nowhere despite the excitement they can give us.

We have to make some drastic changes in our understanding of what should be normal in us. At the moment, what we readily see is a normality based only on some human consensus. The standards and criteria used are simply mundane and temporal that can never cope with everything that our life can pose.

What should be normal in us is to be like Christ, to have his mind and heart, his desire and mission. After all, he is the pattern of our humanity.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com