The quest for unity of life
By Fr. Roy Cimagala
Chaplain
Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE)
Talamban, Cebu City
Email: roycimagala@gmail.com
WE are reminded of this duty to pursue the ideal of unity of life in that gospel
episode where Christ told the crowds and his disciples that while the leading Jews had
taken their seat on the chair of Moses, they should do and observe what these leading
Jews would tell them, but not to follow their example. (cfr. Mt 23,1-12) The reason? “For
they preach but they do not practice.”
This, sadly, is a fact of life. We ourselves often can be accused of the same thing.
We can be very good at preaching but poor in practice. We can be excellent in terms of
theory and doctrine, but the aspect of morality is another story. Yes, it’s part of our
human condition to fall into some forms of inconsistency and hypocrisy in our whole life!
But we should not be overly worried about this phenomenon. It’s not the end of
the world. We can always do something about it. And in a sense, our whole life is
precisely a matter of how we can achieve consistency and unity among the different
aspects and dimensions of our life—the spiritual and material, the temporal and eternal,
the theoretical and practical, the personal and social, etc.
What God expects from us is that we struggle against this lifelong predicament of
ours. As long as there is some struggle, God would already be happy with us. We are
not expected to perfect everything, because it will only be God who will do that for us,
but also, with us.
In that gospel cited above, we are given an idea of how we can pursue this ideal
of unity of life. And that is to be humble. It’s this virtue that would open us to the grace of
God that in the end is the only way we can achieve this unity of life. Let’s forget and
dismiss the idea that we can achieve this unity of life by our own efforts and powers
alone.
This crucial virtue of humility can be developed in two ways: when we humble our
own selves and when we are humbled by others or by some unavoidable
circumstances. In that gospel cited above, Christ told the people that they have to
humble themselves in the sense that they should avoid places of honor and privilege
when invited to banquets, for example.
We have to realize then that any privilege, honor or praise given to us is a call for
us to be more generous in our self-giving to such an extent that we would not run away
from making the supreme sacrifice of giving our life for God and the others, just like
what Christ did.
Our attitude should be to sharpen even more our desire to serve and not to be
served. Christ made it clear to the mother and the brother-apostles, James and John,
when he said, “The Son of man has not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his
life as a ransom for many.” (Mt 20,28)
Reiterating the same idea, he told them, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles
lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. Not so is it among
you. On the contrary, whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your
servant. And whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave.”
No doubt, with humility we can make progress in our quest for unity of life!