Panay News

Die to have the fullness of life

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YES, IN A certain sense, we need to die in order to live, and live not just some ordinary life, but rather the very fullness of life, which is none other than living the life of God. This is no gratuitous affirmatio­n. This is based on what Christ himself clearly said:

“Unless a grain of wheat falls a matter of time before we fall. to the ground and dies, it remains We have to learn the art of dying just a grain of wheat. But if it dies, it according to what Christ meant by his produces much fruit. Whoever loves words to be able to live a life proper his life loses it, and whoever hates his to us. We have to find ways to die a life in this world will preserve it for little everyday so that little by little eternal life.” ( Jn 12, 24-25) also we can achieve a certain degree

We have to remember that we are of the life that God meant for us, he meant to live our life with God, since who created us to be his image and we are supposed to be his image and likeness. We have to avoid simply likeness, children of his, and sharers developing our life purely according of his divine life. For this, we have to to our own designs. extinguish our notorious tendency to We need to chisel out those parts live simply on our own, relying only in ourselves that are not in conformity on our own powers that in the end with God’s designs for us — our sins, also come actually from God. our defects and weaknesses. We have

Let’s realize more deeply and to render death to our pride, vanity, constantly that the only possibilit­y lust, greed, laziness, etc. we have if we do not live our life with These of course will require a God is to sin, if not now, then later. It lot of time and effort, but before will surely come. It would simply be anything else, we would need nothing less than the grace of God to conquer them or at least to have control over them. And God himself gives us this grace abundantly.

This is what is meant by dying a little every day. We have to pray and make sacrifices, denying ourselves of something, even the legitimate ones, like food and drinks and some means of comfort without compromisi­ng our health, spiritual, physical and otherwise.

We have to learn to detach ourselves from earthly things while using them, so that our heart can only be filled with love for God, and with that love, we can love everybody and everything else properly.

We have to see to it that while we die a little everyday according to what is suggested above, there should also be some kind of awareness that we are being purified, liberated from some burden, etc. In other words, while there is some pain, there should also be a correspond­ing feeling of joy and peace, otherwise our dying would be dying for nothing.

There definitely should be some feeling that we are getting more intimate with God and with all the others, irrespecti­ve of how they are to us. This is how we ought to die so as to live the life proper to us.

That’s why Christ said that if we want to follow him, we should deny ourselves and carry the cross. That can only mean that we need to die to ourselves to be with Christ./

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