I am referring to our relationship with God. We always have to find ways of how to keep that relationship strong, vibrant and abiding, one that would truly bring us in such an intimate contact with God, our Father and Creator, that we would vividly know his will at every moment and would love to do that will of his.
Let’s remember that when God created man, he entered into a personal relationship with him precisely because man was created by God to be his image and likeness, to be a person with whom he can share his very life and nature.
As we often hear, we, among God’s creatures, are not just something. We are a someone, a person, with intelligence and will. It is with us, together with the angels, that God establishes a personal relationship. We have to learn how to do our part in corresponding to that God-initiated relationship.
That is why in the narration of the creation of the universe, God simply said “Let there be this and that…” and those things simply appeared and started to exist. But in the creation of man, he just did not say, “Let there be man.” He took some clay, gave it some form and breathed into it and it became a living being. And then God started to talk to the man.
That God-initiated dialogue between him and man should, as much as possible, not be broken. It should be kept going for the whole duration of the life of man who is meant to live not only in time but also in eternity, precisely because man is like God, meant to share in God’s life and nature.
The fullness of our humanity, the completion and perfection of our creation is when we truly become like God, fully sharing in his life and nature, something that can only happen at the end of time. In the meantime, we are still being created. We are still under construction.
We can say that in our case among God’s creatures, we are the only ones together with the angels who are meant to be co-creators with God of our own selves. And since the original creation of man was messed up by our sins, and we now need to be redeemed by God who did so in Christ, then we have to understand that we too are also co-redeemers of our own selves with Christ.
This role of being co-redeemers of our own selves would make it more imperative that we keep the music playing always with God, with Christ and with the many instrumentalities that God has provided us so that we can always be with and in him.
We have to realize that without God, without Christ, the only possibility we have is to stray, to deviate from the proper path. In other words, the only possibility is for us to sin. This happened in the case of our first parents who, in spite of the ideal condition in which they were created, preferred to listen to the devil than to stay tuned with God.
In our case, we are already quite handicapped even from our own conception and therefore more prone to prefer to listen to the devil more than to God. We cannot exaggerate the great need we have to really find ways of how we can keep listening to God so we do not get distracted and carried away from God.
That is why we cannot overemphasize the need for us to really pray all the time, knowing how to convert every situation in our life, every activity, concern, project, etc. we have in life as an occasion to relate ourselves to God.
Let’s humble ourselves to realize that we need all this, since it is pride that would lead us to think that we would just be okay by being on our own, distancing ourselves from God./WDJ