By Fr. Roy Cimagala

WE have to understand that our mundane and temporal affairs are no obstacle in our relationship with God and with others. They should not be. In fact, for most people, these matters and affairs are the very occasion, material and motive for developing the love for God and for others, and thus, they also serve as the means for their own sanctification.

While we have to take utmost care in carrying out our sacred duties of praying, offering sacrifices, having recourse to the sacraments, availing of the spiritual means of formation, etc., we should not forget that our ordinary secular duties and responsibilities play an important role in our spiritual life.

It’s in these latter duties that most people have their usual encounter with Christ. It’s in them that most people have the opportunity to correspond to God’s continuing work of creation and redemption on them.

The basis for this assertion could be the fact that in the life of Christ, our Redeemer, his hidden life that was spent in doing the ordinary work of a citizen in a community is as important and is as redemptive as his public life that was spent going around preaching, performing miracles and ultimately going through his passion, death and resurrection.

In that episode of the boy Jesus who at 12 years of age went with his parents in a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, we can have a good inkling of how his hidden life was also redemptive in character. (cfr. Lk 2,41-52)

He was lost for some days and his parents looked for him earnestly. When finally he was found in the temple, Our Lady said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” To which, the boy Jesus responded: “Why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”

We can have several interpretations of these words of the boy Jesus, but my take is that he wanted to tell his parents that even in his hidden life spent in doing ordinary things, he was doing the things his Father God sent him for, that is, to redeem us.

The episode ended with the boy going back home with his parents and was subject and obedient to them, and he grew “in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.”

I can only draw from this episode the conclusion that the boy Jesus wants to show us that the ordinary things he had to do while being subject to Mary and Joseph were an integral part of his mission of redeeming us.

We really have to look at the usual and ordinary things we handle everyday, our mundane and temporal affairs, more from the point of view of faith rather than just from the point of view of our reason, our common sense, our practical needs.

We need to save our mundane and temporal affairs from the clutches of simply being treated in a completely technical and practical way. We have to learn to see God there. We need to learn to see how his continuing providence over us is working through those usual ordinary things that we do everyday.

Definitely, we need to pause and study how we can train our mind and heart, our senses and all other faculties we have to perceive the spiritual and supernatural dimension of the ordinary things we do everyday and of all our mundane and temporal affairs.

This, of course, will require nothing less than cultivating and growing in our faith, hope and charity which are the main nourishing elements to develop our spiritual life and to acquire that skill in seeing God and his providence in everything that we do everyday.

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Keep the Conversation Going. I am referring to our conversation with God. This should be kept alive always and we should just try our best to find the appropriate ways to achieve it amid the changing circumstances of our day and despite setbacks, mistakes, failures and the sins that we may commit.

We have to be wary of our strong tendency to converse only with our own selves or, at least from time to time, with others. We need to talk to God. Without him, there is no way but simply for us to be confused, tempted and eventually fall.

For this we have to process well the truth that our freedom that gives us a sense of independence and autonomy would not be true freedom if it is not latched onto the will and ways of God, who is the origin, pattern, end and power of freedom. Quickly dismiss the thought that our freedom is just a matter of what we want. That’s clearly a suggestion of the devil.

We need to talk to God and, of course, to listen to him as intently as possible, because first of all our life just cannot be by our own selves. It is a life with God, whether we like it or not. If we really have to get real, then we should realize that our greatest need, one that is so indispensable that we would be nothing without him, is God himself.

And second, it is God who takes the initiative to direct and shape our life, prompting us always about what to think, judge, say and do, etc. He can never be absent from our life since as Creator, he is always at the core of our existence. Being our Creator, he is still forming us to be what he wants us to be.

Third, ours is simply to correspond to his promptings and constant interventions by always orienting our attention to him, keeping ourselves in his presence, and repeating some short prayers that would convey how we are, what we are feeling and wanting, etc., at a given moment.

The thread of our consciousness should always have God in the middle. The moment we seem to lose him, we should react immediately by looking for him. Otherwise, we will be swallowed by the dynamic of self-seeking, and that is toxic to us.

And this possibility of simply playing the self-seeking game is very likely to happen, since if we don’t have the proper spiritual and supernatural bearing that we ought to have, there is no way but be seduced by the many allurements of today’s world. There simply cannot be any resistance to them if we are mainly guided by our senses, feelings and the mainstream materialistic and consumeristic culture.

To keep the conversation with God going, to keep the music playing, so to speak, we really would need to rev up our faith and love for him and for others, we really would need to see him everywhere and in everyone, saint or sinner, rich or poor. We should really be attracted to him.

If what mainly attracts is not God, then we have to realize there is something wrong, and we need to correct it. Perhaps, it’s because we have not spent time praying and meditating on his words and on his life as recorded in the gospels and taught by the Church. Perhaps, it’s because we do not have a spirit of sacrifice yet, and so are easily overtaken by worldly things.

Our relationship with God just cannot go on if we do not do our part in developing and maintaining that relationship. To be sure that relationship is initiated by God himself. It started with God creating Adam and Eve and then talked to them, giving them instructions, etc., something that he did not do with the other creatures.

We have to do our part in keeping that conversation going.

E-mail: roycimagala@gmail.com