Unification and integration in life

NO doubt we have to learn how to contend with the different and even competing and conflicting elements in our life. We have our personal life as well as our family, professional, social, economic, and political life. There are things that need our immediate attention, and yet they should not derail us from our long-term and ultimate goal. There’s a lot more.

We have to deal with many variables in life, and yet we should never forget the constants. We need to give due attention to both the incidentals and the essentials, giving them their proper ranking. There are things that are pressing and that have to be attended to right away, but these should not compromise what is truly precious in our life.

This is not to mention that in our life, we have to unify and integrate the different dimensions of our life—the material and the spiritual, the natural and the supernatural, the temporal and the eternal, the mundane and the sacred, etc.

Yes, we also have our ups and downs in life, successes and defeats, moments of grace and light as well as those of sin and darkness, and we should be ready to react properly to them.

Indeed, things can be very confusing, and we can seriously doubt if we can ever manage to cope. We may choose to take it easy, or to react merely by instinct. But I believe we can be more responsible than that.

The secret is, of course, to go to Christ, to identify ourselves vitally with him. He is the principle of unity and integration in our life. He provides us with the power and the wisdom to put the different things in our life in their proper order.

Let’s remember that in his priestly prayer just before his passion and death, Christ asked the Father that all of us, and everything about us, be one as he is one with the Father. “That they may be one as you, Father, are in me, and I am in you,” he pleaded. (Jn 17,21)

Toward this end, Christ opened himself to all possible situations that man can get into, including to be like sin even if he did not commit any sin at all, (cfr. 2 Cor 5,21), if only to show us how to properly handle these possible situations and predicaments.

Definitely, with him we have to learn how to suffer, since suffering would be unavoidable if we want to unify and integrate the different things in life. He somehow would teach us what and when to drop certain things to accommodate the more essential ones.

We really should try to conform our mind, heart, our will and ways with those of Christ, otherwise we would find ourselves suffering unnecessarily as we have to force ourselves to detach from things that need to be dropped.

This, obviously, will require us to know more about Christ, meditating on his words and deeds, on his whole life and example. More than just knowing him, we have to love him, since that is how we make ourselves one with him.

To be sure, in learning how to unify and integrate everything into a meaningful and redemptive whole, we will commit mistakes and there will be times when we can say, no, to Christ. Let’s just hope that we can learn precious lessons from our mistakes, and that we can immediately repent and convert from our disobedience.

Christ is always patient and merciful. He not only would give us a second chance, but rather as many chances as we need!