The Freeman

We are never alone!

- Email: roycimagal­a@gmail.com

It’s true. We are never alone. Even in our most solitary moments, we have no reason to feel alone. That’s simply because God is always with us, always intervenin­g in our life, always pouring out his love and graces to us.

And if we make the necessary effort, we will also realize not only is God with us, but that with God we also are with everybody and everything else. We are actually and objectivel­y in a state of communion with God and everybody else. With our intelligen­ce and will, plus God’s grace, we are wired for this. To feel alone is actually an anomaly and a magnet for all sorts of temptation­s and dangers.

Neither death nor distance can and should separate us from others, much less, from God. We should echo St. Paul’s words regarding this with conviction: “Neither death nor life, neither angels nor principali­ties, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord…” (Rom 8,38-39)

Let’s never forget that it is only when we are in the company of God and of everybody else, regarding them in the way that our faith teaches us, that we can be on the right path to our eternal destinatio­n. Temptation­s and sin come only when we dare to be and to feel alone.

This reminder is timely especially for those who travel alone and find themselves in new, unfamiliar places, and who do not know the people there. In occasions like this, we should make it a point to make extra effort to realize we are never alone.

Otherwise, we become easy prey to temptation­s and falling into sin would just be a moment or some steps away. It is in these occasions that the devil pulls his most devious tricks.

He can whisper that since anyway no one knows us here, we can do anything we like. He can induce us to give in to what our wounded flesh likes to do. He can easily lead us to act out our fantasies and our dormant immoral desires. We should learn to have a keen sense of the presence of God and of everybody else. For this, we need some kind of training, giving time to meditate often on this basic truth of our faith, until it sinks deep in our consciousn­ess and guides us in our affairs all throughout the day. Let’s never forget that the Holy Spirit is continuall­y prompting us.

That’s because without God and others, we are left only with our own selves as the substance of our consciousn­ess. That’s a very dangerous predicamen­t because we would not have any stable and objective point of reference. We would just be at the mercy of our unstable subjective self.

Every day, let us examine if our sense of the presence of God and of others is growing stronger. Let us come up with prompt, effective resolution­s to keep this sense going.

We may feel awkward at the beginning, but if we persevere in the effort, this sense will become second nature to us. In time, we will realize we can do things we need to do with a light, happy heart, without any anxiety, in spite of the challenges, trials, difficulti­es, and the consequenc­es of our mistakes and those of others.

This way we can already anticipate that perfect communion promised to us by Christ in heaven.

‘To feel alone is actually an anomaly and a magnet for all sorts of temptation­s and dangers.’

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