Battling fears, worries, sadness

Fr. Roy Cimagala .

IT’S really a matter of faith, of how strong our faith is. With faith, we know that whatever be our condition and situation in life, God is always there and will never abandon us. He is there to help us. He actually takes care of everything.

It’s this faith that springs and strengthens our hope and charity, which is the essence, purpose and fullness of our life. With faith, we can manage to be at peace all the time, to experience joy and awe even in the midst of our unavoidable earthly suffering, and to go on and move on despite whatever.

To battle our fears, worries and sadness, we need to strengthen our faith and live it to the hilt. And let us allow it to educate all our human powers and faculties—our intelligence and will, our emotions and passions, our memory and imagination, etc. Let us take time and learn the relevant skills to achieve this ideal.

Let us remember that we are a composite of body and soul. And since our soul is spiritual, it has its life and origin in the Spirit of God himself. We need to develop our life following the ways that would reinforce the unity of the composite parts of our life in their proper order. We have to realize that our life is mainly spiritual and supernatural, not simply material and natural.

That way, we remove ourselves from being entirely dependent on merely human, earthly and temporal factors. We allow ourselves to be governed by a much powerful agency that can effectively cruise us through our life’s ocean of mysteries. Faith enables us to cope with the reality of our life that includes the spiritual and the supernatural.

With faith we will never feel alone. We will always feel accompanied by God, by his angels and saints, all helping and interceding for us. With faith, we know that everything that happens to us, good or bad, has a reason and a purpose, and all of them working for our own good. (cfr. Rom 8,28)

We really have no reason to fear, nor to wallow in worries, anxieties and sadness. Let’s remember that these unfortunate states are fertile ground for the enemies of our soul, especially the devil, to take advantage of us.

About the only reason to fear, worry and be sad is when we lose our faith, when we lose touch with God. We have to pray and pray so that our doubts and fears would not undermine our faith.

What also helps is to develop a sporting attitude in life, because, to be realistic about it, we will always have frustrations, disappointments, mistakes, failures, sins and defeats in our life. But we just have to learn how to move on, just like a good sportsman.

We should always be cheerful in life, and strive to show it even externally with smiles and happy, warm and encouraging dispositions. Even in our grief and mourning, we should manage to learn how to be serene, knowing that suffering and death have already been redeemed by Christ and are now endowed with redemptive power.

Let’s not waste time and energy by falling into the grips of fears, worries and sadness.  When we notice that we are having some languid moments, it can be a sign that our faith is not working, and that we are succumbing to the laws of the flesh and the world, if not, to the tricks of the devil.

We have to extricate ourselves as quickly as possible from that predicament. The ideal to have is to be always cheerful and eager to do things, no matter what the cost involved.

We should be doing a lot of good, constructive work, rather than stuck in the mode of ruing and brooding, sinking in self-pity, etc..

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Never forget God’s mercy. It’s, of course, good that we constantly highlight God’s call for us to follow him, to be holy and perfect as he is, since we have been created in his image and likeness. It’s good that we arealways reminded to love, to pray, to make sacrifices, to frequent the sacraments, to develop virtues, to wage a life-long ascetical struggle, etc.

But we should never forget that in spite of our best intentions and efforts, we somehow also fall short of what is expected of us and that in the end we need God’s mercy to enable us to attain the dignity God is giving us.

Yes, God is indeed very demanding of us. He wants everything from us. He wants us to love him with all our heart and to love our neighbor, including our enemies, as we love ourselves and even as Christ himself has loved us by offering his life for us. But he is also very compassionate with the weak and the sinners. As shown by Christ, God gives special attention to them.

“As surely as I live,” God said in the Book of Ezekiel, “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.” (33,11) And as shown by Christ, God does not wait for man to turn back to him. He takes the initiative to reach out to us, sinners.

In all the miracles that he performed, Christ was more interested in forgiving the sins of those involved than in healing them of their infirmities and predicaments. His love and compassion went beyond the concern for the bodily health of those characters. He focused more on their spiritual recovery.

We should not forget that while God’s grace and mercy need to be merited, he also gives them to us gratuitously. In spite of our best efforts, we really cannot deserve them. We may ask for them as we ought to do, but God gives them to us gratuitously. We have to be wary of the danger of Pelagianism, the erroneous belief that we do not need divine grace to choose good or evil, and to attain holiness.

We have to see to it that in proclaiming the gospel to the others, in our effort to present Christ to the others, we should not simply talk about the strictness of God’s demands and expectations from us, the high standard that he is setting for us. This will scare people more than attract them to Christ. We should always include God’s mercy in all our preaching and counseling.

This will always require an intimate relationship with God himself to be able to come out with the proper mixture of God’s demanding ways and his ever-ready mercy. Priests especially need to know when he is too strict and harsh and when he is too lenient.

That’s why they need to be truly men of God, souls of prayer and solid formation.

It is, of course, very helpful if priests, for example, would examine themselves regularly as to whether they are presenting Christ fairly to the people or whether they are highlighting one side of Christ to the detriment of the other side or angles or aspects in Christ’s life and teachings. It would be good if we, priests, can find a way of assessing whether the people are making progress in their spiritual life or not.

Some consultations may be advisable, and also a mechanism for getting feedbacks from the people. It may happen that what may be needed is just a very simple thing like changing the tone of the voice to make it more welcoming and understanding, etc..

Yes, priests should be a father, doctor, friend, lawyer to everyone especially in the sacrament of confession. In fact, as St. Paul once said, we should be “all things to all men to save some.” (1 Cor 9,22)

E-mail: roycimagala@gmail.com