Our naturalness and our supernatural bearing

WHEN Christ asked Peter if he too should pay taxes, (cfr. Mt 17,22-27) we are given some kind of indication that we should know how to live naturalness in the world while always keeping our spiritual and supernatural bearing.

Especially nowadays when things are getting more complicated and confusing, we really would need how to properly blend naturalness with the spiritual and supernatural goal we are supposed to pursue.

Naturalness has something to do with how to handle our human condition considering what we ought to be and what we are at the moment. Fact is, we have a supernatural goal, nothing less than to be united with God, which we have to pursue in the context of our human and natural world.

Naturalness is about how to mix the spiritual and material dimensions of our life, our personal and social aspects, and other elements in our life that, given the way we are, appear to compete with each other. How to integrate and harmonize them is the task of naturalness.

Naturalness is a very active affair, lived day to day, moment to moment, as we grapple with the continuous flow of our concerns. It’s the front man who does the dirty job of the bigger virtues of discretion, prudence and ultimately charity, the foot soldier who does the hand-to-hand combat, the peddler who does the door-to-door selling.

It has to know when to push and when to pull, what to say and show and what to be quiet about and hide. Obviously, it has to follow a game plan, with a clear goal in mind and a detailed knowledge of all the elements it has to contend with.

It has to know when to be active and when to be passive, when to be aggressive and when to be patient and tolerant. Of course, in our spiritual life, these elements while initially contrasting, can be blended and lived simultaneously, obviously an effect of grace and our cleverness.

It also has to know how to project oneself to the future, given the data of the present and of the past. It has to learn how to relate history and current events with eternity. It should know how to connect the mundane with the sacred, properly managing our earthly resources to pursue our spiritual and supernatural goal.

Naturalness is strengthened when we deepen our convictions about our ultimate goal as well as in our continuing observations and growing wealth of experience of passing things. In a sense, we should have our mind and heart in heaven while keeping our feet firmly grounded on earth.

In short, it knows how to blend what is necessary in our life with what is contingent, what has absolute value with what is relative, what is of faith with what is cultural. It knows what to draw and learn from experience, what to keep and what to discard along the way.

What would greatly help here is to keep an ongoing conversation with Christ who is the very model of how to blend the natural and the supernatural. There should be a streaming awareness that we are with God even when we are doing the most mundane activities.

This is the goal that we should try to reach, overcoming what separates our life from the life of God. While it’s true that there is distinction between the two, there ought to be unity between them.