At God’s Pace

THIS is something we have to understand very well. If we really are true to our Christian faith, if we believe that we are the image and likeness of God and children of his through Christ in the Holy Spirit, then we have to realize that our life ought to be in vital union with God. We should be living and doing things together with God, at a pace that is in sync with God’s.

Patterned after the Son of God who is God’s perfect image, and redeemed from sin by Christ who is the same Son of God who became man, we cannot help but have to look closely at Christ who precisely declared himself as “the way, the truth, and the life” for us.

And if we do that, we will realize that as what Christ himself told us, we need to deny ourselves, carry the cross and follow him. In this way, Christ and us can be in vital union. We can be another Christ, if not Christ himself, “alter Christus, ipse Christus.”

Our identification with him can be so perfect that Christ’s words to his disciples can be applied to us: “He who hears you, hears me, and he who despises you, despises me, and he who despises me, despises him who sent me.” (Lk 10,16)

And if we manage to truly identify ourselves with Christ, we can benefit from what he promised his disciples: “Whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do…If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.” (Jn 14,12-14)

We have to understand that this Christian ideal is not meant only for a few special people who are given some special vocation and mission, and who usually are endowed with special qualities. No! this Christian ideal is meant for all of us.

We have to explode that myth that somehow makes Christianity an elitist kind of religion. It’s about time that we present Christianity as it truly is, a universal call to sanctity by striving, with God’s grace, to become “alter Christus, ipse Christus.”

Yes, even those whom we consider to be ordinary people, with hardly anything that can make them prominent in society, are called to be “alter Christus, ipse Christus,” whose life, whose thoughts, intentions, words and deeds should be in sync with God’s will and ways.

What can we do to pursue this ideal? Well, we just have to make use of all the means Christ himself has made available to us in abundance–the Church, his doctrine, his sacraments, etc.

But on our part, what we have to do is first of all to be continually aware of this ideal, and to start acting on it in any way we can think of. We have to continually converse with God.

If we feel awkward about this, if we notice that nothing seems to come to our mind, we just have to persevere in praying with full trust in God, like a child’s trust in his parents. In time, we will see how our life marches along at God’s pace!