Spiritual means over human means

In all our earthly and temporal affairs, we have to realize that the spiritual and supernatural means always have priority over whatever smart human means we can use. They should always be resorted to before, during and after the pursuit of these affairs.

These spiritual and supernatural means, whose effects may not be immediately felt and may even differ from what we expect or like to happen, actually enter into the very core of whatever issues, challenges and difficulties involved in these worldly affairs of ours.

And that's simply because through them we directly involve God himself in our activities as he should. Let's remember that there's nothing in our life where God is not be involved. He, in fact, should be the first one to be involved. It is also he to whom everything should be oriented. Woe to us if we set him aside or leave him behind.

With God guiding us in these matters, we can hope to be properly enlightened and thus act with a lot of prudence, fairness and charity. First of all, the morality of our acts would be assured. We would develop a certain sensitivity that enables us to relate our earthly affairs to our ultimate and eternal goal.

The human means are meant only to be tools to be used at the instance of the light shed as a result of our intimacy with God. They on their own are never enough to cope with the intricacies of our worldly concerns. They are always in need of a divine inspiration to be truly helpful to us.

Without God, these human means would be fully at the mercy of our own designs which, as we all know, may not be entirely good and fair. We don't have to look far to find proof of this phenomenon. A lot of ulterior motives and manipulative moves can be observed.

We know very well that our intentions very often become too subjective as to miss, at least in part, the requirements of what is good for everyone. Many of us can hardly go beyond our selfinterest. We need to be truly identified with Christ to be able to be truly men for God and for others and to act properly, whatever the sacrifices involved.

In this regard, we can never exaggerate the importance of prayers, sacrifices, recourse to the sacraments, study of the doctrine of our faith, development of virtues, living a life of genuine piety, etc.

These are the spiritual and supernatural means that should always be used even as we make full use also of the human means. We have to learn how to blend them organically to our ways of pursuing our temporal concerns, be it in business or politics or whatever.

These spiritual and supernatural means may require time, effort and even money, but we can be sure they are all worthwhile. Without them, we would be like birds without wings-yes, we can feel lighter but completely unable to fly.

We just have to learn how to discipline ourselves so as to give due importance, attention, time and effort to these indispensable spiritual and supernatural means.

We should learn how to go on with the mysterious ways of the spiritual and the supernatural means. Faith, hope and charity should lead the way, not simply our reason, and much less, our feelings.