Staying on course

OURearthly life, it is said, is a matter of a journey, a pilgrimage toward our eternal destination. Given our conditions here where we have to contend with all sorts of things, there is great need for us to stay on course, avoiding getting diverted and lost along the way. To be sure, we already have been vigilant, ever rectifying our intentions given everything for us to stay on the to make sure that whatever we right track. And that’s nothing else or are doing or whatever situation or no one else than Christ himself who circumstance we can find ourselves tells us that he is “the way, the truth, in, we are always focused on God and and the life.” The constant order of on his will and ways. the day for us, therefore, is how to God is both the principle and end be identified with Christ all the time. of our life, as well as the pattern of We need to be deeply and our life as shown to us by Christ permanently convinced of this who is made alive to us by the Holy truth of our faith and also of its Spirit. He is the one that enables us practicability, otherwise we would to blend all aspects, situations and be wasting time. That’s because we circumstances of our life into one can appear to be doing a lot of things consistent unity. In short, that’s when and yet miss the goal to which we are we can have unity of life. meant to reach. We need to be wary of our

Especially these days when we tendency to get easily entangled in have to contend with more and our worldly and temporal affairs. more things brought about by our Even if we are pursuing lofty earthly technological progress, we can find goals, like philanthropy, social justice, ourselves losing focus and getting economic well-being, etc., we would confused and lost. Our attention can still end up a big failure if all these easily get scattered, our thoughts otherwise legitimate pursuits are not become shallow and narrow, our inspired and aimed at the twin love reactions automatic, mindless and of God and neighbor. involuntary. When we notice, for example, that

That i s why we can never we are doing well in our business overemphasize the need to be always and other professions, but are rather

cold and indifferent to our duty to do apostolate and to help others get closer to God, then we actually are not loving God by doing his will. We are simply pursuing our own self-interests. We are apt to be reproached by Christ who once said: “What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the world, and lose his own soul?” (Mk 8, 36)

We cannot deny that this is the common phenomenon nowadays. Many people are just after their own things at the expense of their duty toward God and others. We need to see to it that in all our activities, plans and concerns, there should only be one objective. And that is to love God and neighbor, as we have been commanded.

We therefore need to devise some kind of plan of life where everything mutually influences each other in pursuit of our ultimate goal of loving God and others. For example, our prayer should inspire our work just as our work should give fuel and inspiration to our prayer.

We need to close the gap between our life of prayer or our contemplative life, on the hand, and our active life of work and our involvement in worldly affairs, on the other hand. Our thoughts should always be both in heaven and on earth, not one without the other.

This means that we should develop and grow in our spiritual life as we get more and more immersed in our earthly concerns. This is what is ideal for us, and it can be achieved if we just put our whole mind and heart into this pursuit. It’s not an impossible dream. We can always count on God’s grace.

We need to see the intimate union between the natural and supernatural,

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