When in a special need

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

LIFE can find us in many different situations, some of them so special and extraordinary that we can find ourselves helpless. In these cases, we should never forget that the first thing we have to do is to go to Christ, asking always for help. He always listens to our pleas, and gives us what is best for us.

We have to entrust ourselves to the most compassionate divine providence and to the workings of the spiritual and supernatural realities that also govern our life. We have to remember that we are not ruled simply by biological laws or physical, chemical, social, political, economic laws. There is a higher law that governs us and that would enable us to transcend our human and earthly limitations.

This is the law of grace, a law that is spiritual and supernatural in nature. It is the law that enables us to go beyond our human limitations without, of course, compromising our humanity. It is the law that enables us to enter into the very life of God who created us to be his image and likeness.

We have to learn to feel at home with this particular condition of our earthly life. We have to acquire the relevant attitude and skills to be able to live with this condition. It is when we seem to reach our human and earthly limitations that we have to abandon ourselves to the more powerful and merciful dynamic of God’s providence over us.

We should try to avoid wasting time lamenting over this condition, or feeling confused and lost. Let us enter into a divine adventure that God is tracing for us. He knows everything and can only mean good for all of us in spite of the many contradictions we can encounter in life.

We should not hesitate to God to ask for miracles. But for miracles to happen, especially the most important one which is our own salvation that involves the forgiveness of our sins, faith is needed. This was dramatized in that gospel episode where Christ was presented with a paralytic lying on a stretcher. (cfr. Mt 9,1-8)

“When Jesus saw their faith,” the gospel narrates, “he said to the paralytic, ‘Courage, child, your sins are forgiven.’” Christ said this before he went to cure the man of his paralysis. He cured the man to prove to the unbelieving Jews that he was truly the Redeemer, and as such can do extraordinary cures. And he cured the man precisely because of their faith, that is, their belief that Christ was truly the expected Redeemer.

Nowadays, many people claim that miracles do not happen anymore. They say miracles only took place in the distant past, the time of the gospel when Christ went around in the land of Judea and Galilee. But now, miracles are considered obsolete, if not an anomaly.

This is like saying that Christ, the son of God who became man, has ceased intervening in our lives, that he was purely a historical man, subject to time and space, and that after death, he is simply no more, completely wrapped in the spiritual world, if ever that exists, and that he has no immediate and tangible impact in our lives.

The problem we have is that we lack faith. It is this deficiency that disables us to see a deeper and richer reality that is beyond what we simply see, touch and understand. It is this deficiency that prevents us from asking for some miracles in some difficult situations we can find ourselves in, and from experiencing them.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com