Big and beyond

While we need to be properly engaged with our daily routine of work, usually the ordinary little duties attached to our profession and the other conditions of our life, we should remember that we have to aim also at the real big thing which is our holiness that requires going beyond the prosaic of the here and now.

We need to make this reminder because many of us are falling into complacency and confusion, lost in the flow of daily events and unable to connect to the ultimate goal we all are meant to reach.

In fact, many now think we just have to live from moment to moment, from day to day, denying any importance to any concern for the future and much less to eternity. Eternal life holds no meaning to many of us. There’s nothing after death. Everything is transitory. Nothing remains forever.

The inquisitiveness of that rich young man who asked Christ, “What good must I do to have eternal life?” is all but gone in the mind and heart of modern man. We seem contented and thrilled only with what we have at hand—the new technologies, fashions, etc.—that appear to capture our dreams and fantasies.

This time-and-earth-bound mentality is actually dramatized abundantly in the gospel. There’s that parable, for example, of a man who in trying to insure his temporal security decided to build larger barns to store his possessions, and said to himself: “Soul, you have much

goods laid up for many years. Take your rest, eat, drink and make merry.” (Lk 12,19)

The lesson Christ wanted to impart from this parable is the following: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things (the earthly, temporal and material things we need) shall be added unto you.” (12,31)

Christ wants us to make “bags which do not grow old, a treasure in heaven that does not fail, where no thief approaches nor moth corrupts.” (12,33)

We have to get out of this time-and-earth-bound outlook, and enter into an exciting adventure that God offers us in his providence, in his abiding governance of his whole creation, in his continuing intervention in our life. It’s an adventure that cruises through time and space but also transcends them to bring us to eternal life and joy.

We just cannot make our life the way we want it to be. We have to live it with God. In fact, only with God would we be able to live our life to the full. Without him, we would be out on a limb, prone to all sorts of danger and harm, inside and outside us.

What this means is that we need to fall in love to be able to connect the material with the spiritual, the temporal with the eternal, the human with the divine. But we have to love with the love of God who is the author, essence, means and end of love.  We have to be forewarned of the many fake forms of love we tend to get tricked into.

With this love of God, we can link the small ordinary events of our life to the big and beyond of our earthly life. And this love of God is none other than obeying God’s commandments. Christ himself said so: “If you love me, keep my commandments.” (Jn 14,15)

This indication was precisely reinforced in that episode of the rich young man. Christ told him that to enter into eternal life, he has to follow the commandments. And when the young man said he was doing all the commandments, then Christ told him to sell all he had and to come, follow Christ.

We cannot exaggerate this need to follow Christ as closely as possible even to the point of leaving behind everything that we have (relictis omnibus). Following Christ would always involve a continuing process of self-denial. It’s a denial that would leave us increasingly empty of ourselves to fill ourselves more and more with Christ.

This is the love of God that would enable us to properly immerse ourselves in our earthly condition and to transcend it as well to bring us to our ultimate destination. This is the love that makes the little things of our day big and acquire an eternal value.

God does not want us to get out of this world. He put us here, in the first place. But he wants us to live our life here properly, that is, with love that usually is manifested by offering everything to God and serving others.

***

Email: [email protected]