The art of blending

MANILA, Philippines - Our life, as it is, consists of many aspects, dimensions, layers and levels. There’s the personal and the social, the internal and the external, the material and the spiritual, the temporal and the eternal, the mundane and the sacred, the natural and the supernatural, etc.

It’s obvious that we need to learn how to integrate them together to establish and keep our true identity and dignity as persons and as children of God. We have to observe the appropriate priorities. In a way, our humanity can be defined and developed in the effort we blend and order all these items.

In fact, the main drama of our life can be microcosmed in this abiding task of ours. How important it is, therefore, that we train ourselves adequately for this purpose, learning the proper criteria and skills, and adopting the right attitudes, mentality and frame of mind!

This is actually an enormous challenge for all of us, for which we need to help one another. First of all, we need to be open to this idea, which is actually a universal goal for all of us to reach. We have to overcome whatever bias and erroneous thinking—there are many—we may have regarding this point.

Toward this end, we should be stouthearted and persevering in spite of the many difficulties, mistakes and failures we surely will encounter. We just have to strengthen our resolve to simply go on no matter what, ever humble to learn from our stumbles, and, of course, never neglecting to ask for God’s grace.

Thing is we need to keep our mind and heart ever alert and nimble, so we can always be active, flexible, creative and inventive, as well as resistant to temptations and discouragement, and to other worldly allurements that can detract us from our proper focus.

 The other day, while attending the thanksgiving party of a recently ordained priest, I felt a little uncomfortable at what I thought was already an exaggerated manner of thanking God and everybody else for the tremendous gift of priesthood.

For sure, our ways of expressing our gratitude can be countless, and what may be ok for one may not be quite ok with another. We have to expect this wide range of possibilities and be broadminded to accept them.

 Just the same, we also have to constantly check ourselves, examining our conscience, and ever watchful of pertinent signs around us to see if we are truly doing things properly.

That is simply because it’s very easy to fall into frivolity and insobriety. The ways of vanity and pride are subtle. The road to imprudence and perdition is wide. They can stealthily spin invisible thread and embed disorderly attachments to otherwise good efforts of ours, disabling us to fly to our appropriate destiny.

And so we need to constantly rectify our intentions, seeing to it that they are completely engaged with God’s will and driven only by love and freedom. As much as possible, we should feel the passion for loving God by loving everybody else all the way.

 For this purpose, we have to learn how to be immersed in things and yet also know how to transcend them. We have to learn to forget ourselves to think only of God and of the others. We should be convinced that love is lived best when it involves suffering and sacrifice and having to ask and give mercy.

So we have to learn how to be both agile and stable, active and contemplative, spontaneous and thoughtful, impatient and patient, intolerant and tolerant, and, yes, why not, manual and mental, emotionally involved and coolly detached.

  We have to learn how to be in the world without being worldly. In fact, Christ prayed for this when he said: “I pray not that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from evil. They are not of the world, as I am not of the world.” (Jn 17,15-16)

 We have to understand that this condition can only be possible if we have a living contact with God himself, with the Holy Spirit who always will prompt us what to think and what to do in every moment. Let’s remember that our life is supposed to be a shared life—it’s both God’s and ours.

 And so in the practical level, we have to continually check that we are always with God, and through Him with everybody else, doing all these with naturalness and discretion without attracting undue attention.

(The writer is Chaplain, Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE) Talamban, Cebu City)