Starting the day right

Fr. Roy Cimagala

THIS may look like just a minor detail in our life, but it actually plays an important, strategic role. If we know how to start our day well, most likely our whole day will run and end well too. Ignoring this detail will most likely leave us always struggling to prime ourselves to do what we are supposed to do the whole day. It would really be quite a drag.

Starting our day right can mean many things. But one thing, for sure, it is about the habit of greeting God right upon waking up, then thanking him at least for the sleep regardless of how it went, and then begin to offer the whole day to him.

That way we start to burn the fire of love in us. Let’s always remember that loving is the ideal condition to be in, and the earlier we set ourselves in it, the better. We are actually meant for loving. We demean our humanity if we fail to love.

And the first object of our love should be God since he is the very essence of love, and the source, end, pattern and power of love. We need to make acts of faith to be able to feel the urge to love God first and last, because only through him can we love everybody and everything else properly.

That morning offering we make as we wake up will provide us with the proper spiritual and supernatural tone to our attitudes, our thoughts, desires, words and deeds. It will remind us that our whole life is and should be an offering for it to be a life of love meant for us.

Yes, our life ought to be spent as an offering. It has to be lived as a gift, because it is first of all a gift also from God to us. In other words, our life has to mirror the life of God himself, whose image and likeness we are. Since God is love, is self-giving, then we too have to live in love and in self-giving.

Let us remember to renew many times during the day that initial offering we do as we wake up, so that the fire of love will continue not only to burn, but to also to grow until we are totally consumed by it at the end of the day.

That’s when we can say we have completed or perfected our offering of ourselves to God and to others. That’s when we can say we have loved fully. That’s when we can say we have consummated our humanity for that day.

We need to renew our morning offering often during the day since we have to contend with many things that will try to ebb away our love. We have our own personal weaknesses, our laziness and complacency. We also have to contend with the many temptations around that tend to make us self-centered instead of being focused on God and on others.

Renewing our morning offering often during the day will launch us into some kind of divine adventure where we will be happily and gamely confronted with challenges and trials. There will be ups and downs, successes and failures, etc. But then again, as long as we offer everything to God, all will just be fine.

Let us make it a habit to make this morning offering everyday as we wake up. When we manage to start the day right, we are bound to end that day right too, that is, with God and in communion with everybody else somehow.

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Heroic Sanctity. Genuine sanctity, and not just the many forms of apparent and fake holiness sadly proliferating in the world today, will always require heroism. And it need not be lived and achieved in some extraordinary situations. It can be attained even in the very ordinary things of our daily life, but pursued in utmost heroism in following God’s will and ways.

In other words, it does not flaunt its performance and achievements. In fact, it likes to pass unnoticed. It’s never showy, although something in it will always attract the attention of those who have faith. Of course, it may turn off those who are hostile to the faith.

This is the sanctity that comes from Christ who, in spite of the many wonderful miracles he made, tried his best not to show off because of them. Rather, he preferred that people get attracted to him when he would already be on the cross, as testified by his words: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” (Jn 12,32)

Genuine sanctity can never sit well with complacency, laziness, self-satisfaction, the attitude that we can say enough in our self-giving and the like. It will always demand more and more from us, and we correspond to that demand with utmost freedom and love, never feeling pressured or coerced to do so.

It is something done, developed and lived gratuitously, reflecting the very gratuitousness of the love of God for us. The dedication and devotion involved in sanctity is freely given, with no strings attached, even if we know that God will richly reward such self-giving.

And in situations where there can be many legitimate options, the one pursuing genuine sanctity will choose the worst option, that is, the one that give the most disadvantage to him, again without seeking any earthly reward.

In that way, he gains more merit in the eyes of God since he would be approximating the example of Christ who chose, of all the options to redeem us, the one where he had to bear all our sins by offering his life on the cross.

This way of behaving echoes what Christ himself said: “When you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you…” (Mt 6,3-4)

In other words, we have to do things out of love for God only and for no other reason. We should avoid trying to fish for some human or worldly glory. The intention should be entirely pure, without any mixture of self-aggrandizement.

In fact, on the contrary, we will seek and choose what will keep us always humble, reflecting the example of Christ himself and that of St. Paul, who said: “Whatever was an asset to me, I count as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things as loss compared to the surpassing excellence of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have lost all things…” (Phil 3,7-8)

This is the heroism involved in the pursuit of genuine sanctity. We need to train ourselves to develop this spirit and attitude that should inspire our every thought, word and deed.

That is why we can never exaggerate the need to humble ourselves all the time, seeing to it that we have a firm grip on our egos whose most subtle form of pride is to project an image of sanctity that is not truly inspired by the love of God, but rather by one’s self-love.

We have to be most wary of this very likely possibility!

E-mail: roycimagala@gmail.com