“Abide in me, and I in you”

That’s what Christ told his disciples, (cfr. Jn 15,4) and now to all of us. This was when he talked about the vine and branches. “I am the vine, you are the branches,” he said. “He that abides in me, and I in him, the same bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing.”

We need to engrave these words in our minds and hearts as deeply as possible, and act on them as consistently as possible. That’s the ideal condition for us to be in. And we should do everything to make this ideal pursued by everyone, especially the young ones.

Nowadays, with all the riveting and distracting developments around, we cannot afford to be casual about this duty which is truly a necessity. While everything temporal and earthly plays an important role in our relation with God, they can be dangerous if they do not have God as their beginning and end, and are simply understood and treated as temporal and earthly.

We really need to train our mind and heart to be always anchored and focused on God. This will take a lifetime to achieve, and we may not be able to perfect it, but the point is simply for us to just try and try.

Especially these days when we are heavily bombarded with fantasies and fictions in novels and movies, we can easily be gaslighted to believe in them if our faith in God is not nourished regularly in our mind and heart.

We would fail to realize that these fantasies and fictions are just make-believe things that only serve as a temporary way of rest and recreation and should not be taken seriously. With a weak hold on our faith and on our spiritual life, we would fail to realize that we are just being tickled to play the game of self-indulgence that would slowly snuff out our relation with God and with others.

Among the many things that we can do to address this problem is to make many pauses during the day if only to recover our proper outlook in life. We have to learn the art of how to stay on course in our life so that we do not get distracted, confused, entangled, and lost. For this, we have to be clear about what the real and ultimate purpose of our life is, as well as know how to relate everything in our life --both the good things and the bad-- to this purpose.

This, of course, would require us to undertake regular review and updating of our plans and strategies through practices like daily examinations of conscience, monthly days of recollection, annual retreats, etc. And even during the day, we should make a number of pit stops to see if we are still on course or are already getting deviated from the proper way.

We should always keep sharp our awareness that our life is actually something like a journey where we are expected to make daily progress on our way to our ultimate home or destination, which is to be with God in heaven. Yes, we have to realize deeply and abidingly that our life here on earth is also like a test God gives us, to see if what he wants us to be is also what we ourselves would like to be.