Up or down?

LET’S never forget that because of our freedom, we always have the possibility and capability either to go up or down, to turn right or left, to move on or to stop not only physically but also morally and spiritually.

In fact, in the spiritual and moral realm, the possibilities are infinite, while in the physical dimension we certainly have clear limits. Yes, we can be a saint or a sinner, a hero or a villain. It’s our choice.

Said in another way, the possibility is always there for us to betray Christ like Judas, or to deny him like Peter. Or we can be another Christ, as is what is most ideal, who remain faithful till the end, whatever it takes, in our love for God and for everybody else.

We should try our best that we make the proper choice. All the means needed for that purpose are already made available. It’s really up to us now to make the proper choice and to be faithful to it by availing ourselves of the means.

For sure, there is always a need to wage a continuing spiritual struggle. As long as we struggle interiorly, we would be nourishing our relationship with God and with others. We would manage to be faithful to whatever commitment we have entered into.

We have to remember that is life is very dynamic, with all sorts of challenges to face, problems to solve, issues to be clarified. We need to see to it that our interior life, our spiritual life, our thoughts, desires and intentions are firmly rooted on God, their proper foundation.

We need not only to purify our thoughts and intentions from any stain of pride, vanity, lust, envy, sloth, gluttony, anger, etc. We need to also fill them and rev them up with true love and wisdom. These are the reasons why we have to engage in a lifelong interior or spiritual struggle.

The ideal situation should be that we are always in awe at the presence of God in our life, making him the principle and objective of all our thoughts, words and deeds. We have to be spiritually fit before we can be fit anywhere else—family-wise, professionally, socially, politically, etc.

We have to strongly remind ourselves that our thoughts and desires should somehow start and end with God in heaven, from whom we come and to whom we belong.

This much, at least St. Paul tells us in very clear terms: “Set your hearts on heavenly things, not the things that are on earth.” (Col 3)

It’s not that we ignore the earthly things. The most obvious and undeniable reality is that we are here one earth, and we just cannot and should not be indifferent to its affairs.

What we are rather reminded of is that we learn how to relate everything to God, and not get entangled with our merely earthly and temporal affairs. Everything is meant to start and end with God who is the Creator of everything and the very foundation of reality. All our earthly affairs should be an occasion and a means to relate ourselves to him.

Our problem that we often do not realize is that we live our life as if everything is just a matter of our concerns here. There’s hardly any reference to heaven. We need to wake up from this lethargy, make the necessary changes in our attitude and actuations, and get to conforming our whole life to this truth of our faith.

If we manage to resolve this problem, we can also manage to be faithful to Christ until we become like him, and avoid the possibility of betraying him like Judas and denying him like Peter.