For so long, I have been focusing on a lot of details for my future, both menial and defining: where I will work, the clothes I will be wearing for my job interviews, how I will survive journeying the streets of the metro (I almost want to give up on this because MRT crushes me almost everyday), how I cope with my separation anxiety and well, move on with my life. On these times, I admit that everything revolves around ME. It was as if I am the center of it all.
Today, God is reminding me to re-shift my focus to Him from me. I am constantly being reminded to go back to my ultimate goal in this world: to be holy. This does not only apply to me; it applies basically to every person of God! No man could say that only priests, pastors or monks could achieve a high degree of holiness, although entering the religious life would make it a lot easier. Case in point, Mary and Joseph did not become hermits, as they were called for the family life; yet they are two of the greatest saints that mankind is blessed to have.
So God did not create everyone to become priests and nuns. If such were so, the world would be a total chaos, just as how chaotic the ecosystem would be if everyone were rabbits. However, everyone is created by God to become saints (Do not be confused. It does not necessarily mean we'd all be canonized. It means we're all meant to go to heaven. How could it be otherwise?). This is, as Pope John Paul II coins it, the universal call to holiness: trying to be holy whatever one's state of life is. How does one become holy? It is achieved by doing everything in love, no matter how minute. This love is radiated to others in all the world, and this love is rooted in one's love for God. Thank you, St. Therese, for this terrific reflection.
While all the world clamor fame, money and glory, I am asked by the Good Lord to jeer away from these vanities and focus on serving Him and others through Him. "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it" (Matthew 7:13-14).
Easy to say. However, the path to holiness has never been an easy toil, let alone becoming holy in the midst of a busy city like this. Speaking of which, I am definitely sure that I will have a hard time attaining holiness in this ungodly place (do not react, for I can attest that this is really an ungodly place). There are a lot of interesting "stuff" here which do not make you holy, and even which make you sin. One brilliant person expressed that "In spirituality, not to progress is to regress." There are lots of temptations here, left and right, that will make you regress in your spiritual life. Honestly, it terrifies me. Not because I am a holy person, but because I am the exact opposite and I tend to give in to these vainglories. The way of the Cross is so hard!
But I am willing to take the challenge of striving to be holy in my state of life as an employee (as of the moment). There is no other way to go, for I believe that I will truly regress if I do not keep a steady pace onward, towards Jesus. With this, the song Sa Iyong mga Yapak keeps playing in my head, especially the refrain: Laban sa agos ng mundo, lumakad Ka sa landas Mo. Laban sa lakad ng mundo, landas na saki'y nais Mo.
Bring it on. I know that I am never alone.
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