Fidelity and perseverance

By the time this column sees print, we most likely will have begun the liturgical season of Advent. It marks the onset of a new liturgical year, having ended the previous one with the celebration of the Solemnity of Christ the King on November 24.

It's good to remember that our life here on earth assumes a cyclical character, with beginnings and endings, in a spiral that hopefully will launch us into our definitive life in eternity with God in heaven where the day is endless since "there shall be no night there," (Rev 21,25) and "where God shall wipe away all tears from our eyes." (7,17)

It's good that we from time to time remind ourselves of this character of our earthly life, since we often are so overtaken with our earthly and temporal affairs that we forget the eternal dimension and destination of our life.

As the Letter to the Hebrews says it, "For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come." (13,14) We need to sharpen that sense of longing and preparation for that "city which is to come," not out of fear, but rather out of love.

That is why we have always been encouraged to consider in a regular fashion the so-called "Last Things," namely, death, judgment, hell and heaven, so that we can get a global and even cosmic picture of our life, hopefully leading us to distinguish between what is essential and the incidental, and to know how to relate every earthly and temporal affair of ours to our eternal destiny.

We need to see to it that we are on track, that we are both faithful and persevering in pursuing our ultimate and permanent goal. We cannot deny that there will be trials and challenges, successes and failures in the ebb and flow of our life.

We just have to see to it that we are not lost, and that if we deviate a little or a lot from the path, we know how to return. There's always hope. And if we stick to our Christian faith, we know that all the means for us to pursue our goal, no matter what the vagaries of life are, are provided for in abundance.

One tool we can use to be realistic about this duty of ours is to develop the practice of daily examination of conscience. Usually done at the end of the day, just before going to bed, it allows us to monitor how things went during the day, practically giving us a good idea of whether we are still on track or already deviating from it.

The examination of conscience is a wonderful moment of ending everything with God every day. After all, God is everything to us, and we should realize that we need to be with him at the end of the day, no matter how we were during the day.

It's a need that we have to be more conscious of, since it is a need that often is not felt and perceived by the senses, or by the body in general, but rather by the spirit, by our mind and heart enlightened by faith.

It's a need that is often ignored and even rejected by many worldly concerns, trends, fashions, ideologies and political systems. If ever it is considered, it is often confined in strictly religious context, and is practically not given any place in our temporal and mundane activities.

The examination of conscience is a very helpful tool in our effort to be faithful and persevering in our earthly pilgrimage toward our eternal goal. There we make a proper closure to our day as we enter our daily rest at night.

And this is also something that we have to be clear about. Our rest should not just be understood as a physical rest. It has to reflect the rest of God that is mentioned in the narrative of the creation of the world where on the seventh day, he rested.

Rest, for us, is much more than just a physical need. It has a primarily theological dimension. Rest has to be resting with God. It has to reflect God's rest which means that he admired everything that he did in his creation and entered into communion with them.

Our rest, which we do daily in our sleep at night, should correspond to God's rest with us and with all his creation. It has to be our part of the communion that is meant to take place between God and us.

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