A taste for the supernatural

Fr. Roy Cimagala

I WAS amused when I recently read an article of an American columnist. Commenting on the state of politics in the States today, he said, “We are living in an age when what you say and its relation to facts is completely irrelevant.”

Yes, I know the comment was dripping with cynicism, but I somehow cannot help but nod in agreement, at least, in some instances. Even here, looking at all the posturing and listening to the pompous words and promises of politicians, I can’t help but see the gaping disconnect between the assertions and facts, between words and deeds.

But I would like to paraphrase those words and put them in another level. What we are also seeing these days all over the world is the great disconnect between our daily life and the supernatural life we are supposed to have. This is the graver predicament all of us are in, and a greater challenge to face. Let’s hope that we are more aware of this fact and more concerned about it.

We are meant for a supernatural life. Our human nature, with our spiritual soul that enables us to know and to love, and therefore to enter into the lives not only of others but also and most importantly, of God, urges us to develop a supernatural life.

It’s a life with God always. It just cannot be exclusively our own life, taken personally or collectively. It’s a life that depends mainly on God who gives us the grace that purifies and elevates it to his, but it also depends on us, on our freedom to correspond to this loving will of God for us.

We have to develop a taste and even an appetite for the supernatural life with God and of things supernatural in general. In this we have to help one another, because in the end, this is our common ultimate end in life—how to live our life with God, how we can be immersed in God even as we are immersed also in the things of the world.

We have to help one another wean ourselves from the exclusive dependence on sensible, material and even merely intelligible circumstances of our life. Yes, it’s true that we cannot avoid them, since they are an integral part of our humanity. In fact, we need them. But let’s understand that they are not the be-all and end-all of our life. At best, they are means, tools and occasions to develop our supernatural life with God.

We have to understand also that our supernatural life does not in any way nullify our humanity, and everything related to it—our senses, emotions, our family and professional, social, political life, etc. If anything at all, it promotes these aspects of our life, purifies them and elevates them to the supernatural order of God.

We have to disabuse ourselves from the thinking, now so common in many worldly ideologies and lifestyles, that the supernatural life undermines our humanity. Yes, there might be some awkwardness involved, especially in the beginning, but such problems and difficulties do not detract from the objective necessity we have to develop a supernatural life.

The same with the suspicion that the concern for the supernatural life would make us self-centered, detached from the things of the world. If we truly are with God, we cannot help but be immersed with the things of the world, just as God sent his son to the world to save us.

We have to know what is involved in developing a taste for the supernatural and the supernatural life itself. It involves the whole range of the divine gifts of faith, hope and charity that actually are given to us in abundance. They are all available, practically all there for the taking.

This definitely would require from us certain practices, spiritual in nature, to make use of the richness of these faith, hope and charity gifts of God to us. We have to learn how to pray, to offer sacrifices, to have recourse of the sacraments, to undertake a continuing formation regarding our human, spiritual, doctrinal, professional and apostolic aspects of our life.

We have to wage a lifelong ascetical struggle to develop virtues, and to handle our weaknesses, temptations and the mistakes, failures and sins that we for sure commit at one point or another.

We should do all this with a lot of hope and optimism, deeply convinced that more than our effort, it is God who guarantees the success of this enterprise as long as we also do our part.

E-mail: roycimagala@gmail.com