Approaching
heaven by doing good on earth
By
Fr. ROY CIMAGALA,
roycimagala@gmail.com
November 16, 2022
THAT parable Christ told
his disciples about a certain nobleman who was in a journey to
obtain a kingship somewhere and leaving his servants with certain
amounts for them to do business with (cfr. Lk 19,11-28), gives us
the precious lesson that the way to heaven is through the path of
generosity and fruitfulness in our earthly affairs.
The parable was occasioned
when the people thought that with Christ speaking to them, the
Kingdom of God would appear there immediately. It was meant to tell
them that the way to heaven was to take care of their earthly and
temporal affairs.
It was meant to tell us
that our earthly affairs are actually designed by God to bring us
back to him, and it would be up to us to follow that design or not.
Of course, knowing how we are, there is always the tendency to
follow simply our own designs rather than God’s. And that’s
something we have to be wary of and to correct.
We should be very clear
about this basic truth about the world in general or about the whole
of nature that has been created by God. We need to realize that as
God’s creation, the whole world of nature has been imprinted with
God’s laws that are meant to give glory to God and to lead us also
to him, giving him glory as well. In other words, depending on how
we see the world, it is actually a pathway to heaven, to God.
Everything that we
discover and make use of in the world should lead us to ask
ourselves whether what we are discovering are truly in accordance to
God’s will, to his true designs of the world, and whether we can
discern how they can be used to give glory to God, which is a matter
of loving him and serving the whole of humanity.
We have to be wary of the
danger of discovering and using things simply in accordance to our
own understanding of them and also to our own interest only. This is
a common and abiding danger that we have to be most wary about. We
have to do everything to avoid and overcome that danger.
Thus, we have to develop
that strong and deep attitude of always referring things to God
before we put our hands on them. That way, we would be putting
ourselves on the right track that hopefully will lead us to God and
to see and use things the way they should be seen and used.
This attitude, of course,
would require of us to be guided always by our Christian faith,
instead of just being guided by our human estimation of things. And
for that faith to be effective in us, we obviously need to be
humble. Without humility, there is no way faith can have any effect
on us.
Everyday, we should be
keenly aware that we need to be fruitful and productive. That’s
simply because even from the beginning of our creation in Adam and
Even, this has always been God’s will for us.
We should be looking for
God always in everything that we get involved in. In all the things
that we do or handle, we should be conscious that all those things
are for God, rather than being interested only on what are there in
those things that are for us.
Let’s always remember what
Christ himself said: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his
righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Mt 6,33)