Keeping in touch

Some people may find this delusional, but together with all the saints and many others striving to be good and holy despite obvious limitations and imperfections, I can assure everyone that getting and keeping in touch with God is not only possible, but also highly feasible and practicable. Not only that, it is necessary.

This is no gratuitous affirmation. This is no fantasizing.

Many layers of reason, if we do not want to be bothered yet by inputs of faith, can already give us solid basis for this. If by reason alone, we can safely conclude that there must be God, otherwise, we could not explain our existence and the order that we still see around.

And this God is not just any god, man-made, and often shaped according to our own desires and fears. This God has revealed himself. He is no distant God, aloof and indifferent to our affairs.

In fact, he became man and lived with us, such that what is ours, including our sins and defects, can also be considered as his. The very mystery of his Incarnation tells us of a most wonderful exchange: what is his becomes ours, and what is ours becomes his, not in the sense that we bring down God to us, but rather to bring us back to God from whom we come and to whom we belong.

And even if this God-man, Christ, already died, we also know that he resurrected and ascended into heaven, but leaving us still with his living presence through the Church, and especially through his word and the sacraments. He promised that he will be with us all the way till the end of time.

As clearly revealed and taught by Christ, this God loves us no end. He shares what he has with us. He starts this by giving us his grace that includes the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity.

In more concrete and direct terms, he continues to intervene in our life, speaking to us through the ordinary events and circumstances of our life. He is never absent in any moment of our life. Even in our most horrible situation, when we fall sick with sin, he would still be around, ever eager to help us out.

Christ said it clearly, "They that are well have no need of a physician, but they that are sick. For came not to call the just, but sinners." (Mk 2,17)

With respect to us, God designed and created us in his image and likeness, endowing us with powers and faculties that would enable us to correspond to him. That is why, on our part, we need to realize that we have develop and use, to their fullest potentials, these powers and faculties God has given us.

This means we have to learn to pray, to enter into a continuing dialogue with him, making use of whatever situation, circumstance and even predicament we may be in to occasion and maintain this contact with Christ.

We just have to exercise our faith, fleshing it out with a working piety that would enable us to be aware of God's constant presence in our life and to correspond to his will and designs for us.

We have to be more aware of this need and our duty to live it. Getting and keeping in touch with God is possible, is feasible, is necessary. This should not be some kind of a pipe dream to us anymore.

Nowadays when God is given at best some lip-service alone or just a token of formality, we need to take this duty to develop our relationship with God more seriously. To be sure, such relationship would not be a hindrance to our daily affairs and concerns.

Quite the contrary. It will help us distinguish between good and evil, safe and dangerous, fair and unfair, etc. Far from taking us out of the world, it will immerse us in it even more, but orienting it to its proper end.

We have to realize that the world and our own flesh in general have their own laws that need to be directed toward God. They just cannot be left on their own, and allowed to lead us along their impulses.

Remember Christ saying, "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." (Mt 26,41) And, "They are not of the world, as I also am not of the world." (Jn 17,16)

These words indicate we need to keep in touch with God to bring our wounded flesh and the wayward world back to him.