Can we really live a supernatural life?

THIS is a question many people ask after being told that we are all meant to live a supernatural life. And we just have to start explaining.

First, that we are meant to live a supernatural life is based on the fact that we have been created by God in his image and likeness. We are meant to be children of his, meant to share in the very nature and life of God, as St. Peter himself in his second letter said so:

“His (God’s) divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, and by which he has granted his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature.” (1,3-4)

Our life is always a shared life with God, because as a creature of his, we cannot be without our Creator who gives and keeps our very own existence. And of all the creatures, we as persons, endowed with the capacity to know and to love, have a very intimate character in our coming from him and belonging to him.

But before we do our part in developing a supernatural life, we are told that God has already given us everything so that we can share in his divine nature and supernatural life. He has given us his grace which comes to us in many, many ways.

We have the sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist. We have his living word in the gospel and other instrumentalities that spread this living word of his. We have the living witnesses of many holy men and women, starting with our Blessed Mother, etc.

We need to feel at home with this truth of our faith that our life is meant to be supernatural with God. On the part of God, he has adapted himself to our own condition, wounded as it is by sin, by becoming man and going all the way to assuming all our sins even without committing sin just to save.

St. Paul said this: “For our sake he (God) made him (Christ) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Cor 5,21)

The corollaries we can derive from these wonderful words can be that any situation we can find ourselves in, whether it is big or small, ordinary or extraordinary, good or bad, is a situation where we can always find Christ, Christ who is willing to save us, to put us to the right path, to lead us to our eternal destination.

We should disabuse ourselves from the idea that supernatural life in this world is exclusively a life of wine and roses, all bliss, and extraordinarily beautiful. We should disabuse ourselves from the idea that supernatural life is one that is marked only by very special experiences like ecstasies, levitations, bilocations, stigmatas, glossolalia, and other mystical experiences.

Supernatural life here on earth can be spent in an environment of blood, sweat and tears. In fact, the cross in all its forms can be considered a genuine sign that one is living a supernatural life.

All we have to do is to be mainly guided by our faith, rallying all our powers—our intelligence, will, emotions and passions, our memory and imagination, etc.—to the dynamic of our faith.

Let’s remember always we are only on some kind of pilgrimage in this earthly life of ours now. We are meant for eternity—with God in heaven. That is our definitive life. But we have to see to it that our earthly life is also supernatural, and not just natural, because, in our case, there is no such thing. If our life here is not supernatural, then it is just animal life and is completely inhuman.