Daily Reflections April 19, 2012

HEAVENLINESS AND EARTHLINESS

 

There are people who are highly specialized and who know all there is to know in one specific field of inquiry. They can talk for hours on their chosen field. The depth of their knowledge is nothing short of encyclopedic. And there are individuals who love to talk of one and only one topic. They can rant on and on and bore you to death about their “single-issue” expertise. The first is remarkable and interesting. The latter, however, soon becomes uninteresting and boring.

I have met people who talk of nothing else but business. Their whole lives are characterized by purely earthly concerns. And then there are those whose main preoccupation is simply so heavenly. They talk endlessly about Latin Tridentine Masses, for example, or pontificate flawlessly on dogma. The former is too earthly to a fault; the latter, too heavenly for comfort.

The Gospel passage today refers to being earthly and being heavenly. It makes no secret about the order of importance between the two. “The one who comes from above is above all. The one who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of earthly things.”

Heavenliness and earthliness are not meant to be two opposing and irreconcilable poles. They don’t mutually cancel each other. No, they complement one another. Classical spiritual writers speak of the twin poles of nature and grace, the natural and the supernatural, the spiritual and the corporeal. They both come into play in the composite being called the human person, called to spiritual heights but with two feet firmly planted on the ground, at least for the time being.

Don Bosco, the man and the saint, is a good representation of this. He is described as “profondamente uomo; profondamente santo” (deeply human; deeply divine). So is Blessed John Paul II — human to the core but with heaven as his final goal. In both men, nature and grace, the earthly and the heavenly, were molded into one. Fr. Chito Dimaranan, SDB

 

REFLECTION QUESTIONS: Are you interested only in earthly things? How can you make yourself both fully human and spiritual?

 

Lord Jesus, may I learn to be both fully human yet spiritual, too. May my eyes be fixed on You as I live out my purpose in life.