We can do the work of God
By Fr. Roy Cimagala
Chaplain
Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE)
Talamban, Cebu City
Email: roycimagala@gmail.com
YES, we can! Christ said it clearly. “Amen, amen I say to you, he that believeth in
me, the works that I do, he also shall do; and greater than these shall he do.” (Jn 14,12)
Incredible, indeed! But that’s just how it is. If we would just bother to consider
who we really are, then it should come as a given that we can do God’s work. Our life is
truly a shared life with God, since we are his image and likeness, sharers of his life and
nature.
While all creatures enjoy a certain connaturality with God, the Creator, we of all
the creatures enjoy that connaturality to the highest degree. We have been created in
such a way that we just don’t belong to God. Rather, we enter into the very life and
nature of God himself.
That is why we are made a person, and not just a thing or some living plant or
animal. As a person, we have been hard-wired in such a way that we can knowingly,
willingly and freely relate ourselves not only with others and with all the other creatures,
but also and first of all, with God himself.
Our spiritual faculties of intelligence and will can do that for us. That is why our
life cannot help but be a shared life with others and with God himself. This is a basic
truth about ourselves that we should try to continually remind ourselves of, if only to
uphold it and reinforce it, since we also have the tendency to keep to ourselves rather
than to continually relate ourselves to God and to the others.
Yes, we always have the tendency to fall into self-indulgence and self-absorption.
We have to be wary of this danger that is clearly becoming widespread. Self-indulgence
and self-absorption are a constant threat, especially these days when good and evil are
so mixed up that we would mostly likely be left confused and easily taken by the sweet
poisons that today’s new things readily offer.
The slippery slope to self-indulgence and self-absorption that takes us out of our
road to our ultimate and proper goal happens practically everywhere. For example, we
can start going to the Internet for the legitimate purpose of getting some information that
we need. But along the way, we get distracted by something else that can appear
interesting to us also.
So, we take a bite, and then another, until we fail to realize that we are already
getting entangled and hooked. It is like being hijacked. We lose our sense of direction,
and before we know it, we would already have forgotten why we went to the Internet in
the first place.
We should always do things with God and for God. That would convert
everything that we do, no matter how small and insignificant, into God’s work also.
Obviously, doing things with God and for God presumes that what we do is in accord
with God’s moral laws and is done as a way to glorify him and to help the others.
For this, we have to see to it that we do things always with Christ who clearly
said that “whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me
scatters,” (Lk 11,23) and “I am the vine, you are the branches.” (Jn 15,5)
This is how we can do the work of God!