By: Fr. Roy Cimagala
THESE two should go together. While it’s true that holiness necessarily involves suffering, and suffering all the way to the cross or martyrdom, it should never be forgotten that sanctification is a happy adventure.
Unless sanctity is understood and lived this way, we would have serious reason to doubt whether one is really on the right track to his ultimate goal. Most likely, what would happen is that one is simply embarking on his own enterprise without the benefit of God’s protection, an anomaly that has to be remedied.
Holiness is necessarily a project with God. In fact, it is God’s project first, before it is ours. All we have to do is to cooperate as freely and lovingly as possible, using all the powers and resources we have, powers and resources that also are provided for us by God.
It’s in this context that sanctification can be described as something like a reality show. Reality shows are seemingly unscripted shows but actually have a lot of planning and programming put into them.
The work of sanctification is the ultimate reality show where are all players in a life-long drama involved in a very suspenseful and mystery-laden drama, but with God in full control of the whole situation.
Except that in this work of sanctification, the outcome is, as a legal jargon would have it, final and executory, with effects that will run for all eternity. There can be no more appeal to be made. Just the same, we should focus more on the fact that God is in full control of the whole situation, no matter how much we mess it up.
He is the ultimate father who knows how to provide for his children, how to heal what is wounded, how to repair what is damaged. In the end, we are told that his mercy is forever.
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