For the Sake of the Kingdom

The easiest way to know the will of God in our lives is to live out our vocation. It may be easier for priests and religious to do what they need to do everyday as their vocation has almost given them what actually God needs from them everyday in the exercise of their ministry.

However for baptized lay, we share in the three ministries of Christ, to be priest, prophet and king. This now becomes complicated because these ministries are not only exercised in the context of a lay’s vocation to his/her family but also his/her role in society and the Church. Of course the Church, most of the time, will always say that our first priority is our family as it is our first vocation.

There are times when duty calls soldiers to leave their families. There are times, when mother or father and sometimes both parents have to leave their children behind and find a way to support financially their children from working abroad for a number of years and even for an extended period of time.

So it is true that at times some may be called to leave family for the sake of the Kingdom of God. We may not be called to literally leave behind our loves one but there will come a moment when we may hear an invitation to decline a scholarship, or a promotion, or a romance for the sake of the Kingdom. There will be a moment we may skip a family dinner and/or a family social for some ministry we will have to do because nobody else has the time or has the willingness to do it.

Gospel stories tell us how the apostles have been called. Yes, they may have more than a few shortcomings but when that initial call came, as challenging as it was, they left their nets, their father, their work and made no excuses.

Can the same be said for us?

I hate Religion but love Jesus?

"The Spirit of Jesus is introduced into our earthly life, not through the medium of individuals endowed with special charismatical gifts, but through the ministry of an ordered hierarchy, which being appointed by Jesus to be the structural basis of the community, creates, supports and develops it. So the Church possesses the Spirit of Christ, not as a many of single individuals, nor as a sum of spiritual personalities, but as the compact, ordered unity of the faithful, as a community that transcends the individual personalities and expresses itself in a sacred hierarchy. This organized unity, this community, as germinally given with the Head, Christ, and depending upon His institution, is a fundamental datum of Christianity, not a thing created by the voluntary or forced association of the faithful, not a mere secondary and derivative thing depending on the good pleasure of Christians, but a thing which, in the divine plan of salvation, is in its essence antecedent to any Christian personality and is to that extent a supra-personal thing, a comprehensive unity, which does not presuppose Christian personalities, but itself creates and produces them." The Spirit of Catholicism by Karl Adams

Teach Me Your Ways O Lord

We are Christians, followers of Christ and in the biblical sense, followers of Christ are disciples. We live the reality that it is Christ who calls us and we are here because we have answered that call. We have come to believe and see and our coming and believing lead us to transformation.

We believe that the teachings and life of Christ are the best way to live and in here we become who God intends us to be – to become the best version of ourselves. To become the best not as the world sees us with its own secular standards of being “best” but to become the best as God sees us.

In our culture today that puts emphasis on appearance and entertainment. We have come to realize that we are lacking and seeing the shortage of spiritual heroes or models.

The models that our culture exults are those who have achieved their American and/or Canadian dreams. That the summit of all our dreams seem to be based on the success in one’s profession or their financial lives. Most people will work tirelessly to be able to afford their dream house, land their dream job and buy a new car every year only to find out that 
after reaching one dream to the other - that we are still lacking.

This could probably be summed up with what St. Augustine has said – “our hearts are restless until they rest in God.” Because deep inside us, we yearn for love and to be loved and our true longing is to belong to God and feel the blessings of being his child.

This should be our ultimate dream – our heavenly dream? Have we not dreamed of going to heaven and be with God for eternity? If we understand these questions, it should lead us to shift our focus and make that the ultimate goal of our life.

Each year, we are given a symbolic opportunity to mark the passing of the old and the beginning of a new better life. But the renewal of one’s self and the growth of our character do not happen with the change of calendar year. They require acknowledgment that there is something wrong with our philosophies or our understanding on how life should be lived. They require a decision to change those ways and return to God. To realize that all this time - I have been dreaming the wrong dream.

This year, starting today, we can decide to do something new. Whether we’ve ever done it before or not, we can set ourselves to becoming what God intended us to be. If we follow the teachings of Christ, if we embody the character qualities, the virtues, that he laid out for us, and if we make the Kingdom of God our primary goal, then with the help of the Holy Spirit we will move toward fulfilling the nature that God created in us. We will flourish. We will be happy. Because we will have learned that happiness itself is not the goal but is a side effect of the goal that God set for each of us.

In the great commission, Jesus asked all of us to go to the ends of the earth – not as theologians or bible scholars – but to be a witness. People want to see someone. Gandhi, when asked why he did not become a Christian, his answer was “I did not meet one!” I know by experience that the presence of God in our innermost interior calls us to move beyond the surface of our humanity. We need to learn to listen and have the courage to respond.

Be a witness!