Fr. Roy Cimagala is a Catholic priest and the Chaplain of the Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE) in Talamban, Cebu City. A prolific columnist and spiritual director, he provides daily theological insights and moral guidance for the modern believer. His writing bridges the gap between traditional Catholic doctrine and the complexities of contemporary Philippine life, offering a roadmap for spiritual maturity and "new creation" in Christ.
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Christ wants us to be forgiving always as he himself has been and will always be forgiving to all of us. If we understand our humanity as being patterned after Christ, then we have to realize that like Christ, we have to be forgiving always. Even if some offenders of ours have not yet asked forgiveness from us, like Christ just before he died on the cross, we should offer forgiveness to them.
For this, we have to be willing and ready to leave everything behind. We should not only be generous in giving away things. Rather, we should give our very own selves, convinced that by doing so we would be completely emptied of ourselves and filled only with the spirit of Christ. This is what is proper to us.
“Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. But if it dies, it produces much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.” (Jn 12,24-25)
To strengthen our spirit of fraternity and charity, we should see to it that we are always friendly to everyone in spite of our unavoidable differences and conflicts. Our friendships should be truly human, complete with generous details of affection and ready understanding and compassion. But it, of course, has to be based on the supernatural love of God that is fueled by his grace which we should always ask for.
With this gospel episode, we are somehow reminded how we ought to live by our earthly and temporal condition but without losing sight of our eternal goal. In other words, we have to learn, even now, how to live both in the world and in heaven.
For example, in that episode of a father of a lunatic who was possessed by a demon, Christ reproached his disciples for being unable to drive out the demon because of their lack of faith. (cfr. Mt 17,14-20)
It’s a life with God always. It just cannot be exclusively our own life, taken personally or collectively. It’s a life that depends mainly on God who gives us the grace that purifies and elevates our life to his life. But it also depends on us, on our freedom to correspond to this loving will of God for us.
This gospel episode, of course, tells us that if we truly follow Christ, then like him, we should not only expect suffering and death but also welcome them. That’s because in the first place we cannot avoid suffering and death in this life, no matter how much we try. But more importantly, if we have the same attitude Christ had toward his suffering and death, we know that our own would have a positive and redemptive value.
He is actually showing us how to carry out a very important duty that is incumbent on all of us if we want to keep our humanity intact, let alone, our Christianity. It is the duty to pray always because that is our fundamental way of being in touch with God, our Creator, and Father. We need to be always with God. We will only have trouble when we lose touch with him.
This clarification is important and quite relevant these days as many of us are pressured, with all the challenges of our times, to go practical at the expense of our prayer and piety.
This is what familiarity is all about and what it produces. As an adage would put it, familiarity breeds contempt. It is the state of getting too accustomed to God and to his goodness such that we would not feel the urge anymore to thank and praise him for everything that we have and enjoy, since all these things come from him.
To practice both restraint and hope is indeed a big challenge for all of us, since, human as we are, we always tend to act spontaneously or instinctively to things that take place in our life here on earth, with hardly any consideration of the global picture provided by our Christian faith in which things, in general, ought to be seen.