A Consistent Goal...

By: Rick Hernandez

​A few months ago, during a team-building exercise at the office, we were asked whether we had a principal goal to accomplish at work. Our group’s answers varied and ranged from the selfless “wanting to do good for our patients” to the ambitious “climb the corporate ladder.” I noticed that the people answering had one thing in common: they knew their answers right away. They knew what they wanted to accomplish at work.
 
After this question, the group leader asked us whether we had a primary goal in life. To my surprise, most of my co-workers struggled with their answers, some starting with “If I have to have a goal, it would be...” or “I don’t really know, I guess it would be...”. I found this rather curious.
 
The point of the exercise was to invite us to think about how work is part of life, and life is what we live. The reality is that we tend to separate our work from everything else, almost like a different world.  We invest a third of our time entirely at work, but it tends to be disconnected from the rest of our lives... 
 
Later I started to think about my own life, how I’m a husband, father, son, brother, friend, mentor, mentee, teacher, student, and asked myself the same questions...
For us as a community of faith, our Lord’s Church, what is our goal in life, at work, on the street, and at home?  Do we have a main, all-encompassing goal to the way we are meant to live our lives, one that applies to all that we are and are called to be here on this Earth?
 
I prayed for a while, and eventually, I was given this answer: “To accept the love God has for me and share it with everyone, through who I am and what I do.”  At the end of the day, isn’t this what our God commands us to do? This is something we can do everywhere.  By showing His love for us in everything we do, we are as images of Christ in the world, not necessarily by words, but by action.
 
To accept His love, we plug into the source, our Lord Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. Participating in His feast, the Eucharistic banquet, the Holy Mass, we recharge our hearts with the faith, hope, and charity we require to perform our daily chores and jump-start the loving relationship with our brothers and sisters.
 
We are children of God, not just some of the time, but all of the time. We are Church, not just on Sundays, but every day. We are sent disciples, not just at Church, but everywhere. We are called to constantly and consistently be in relationship with our Lord, and to show His love to others, that our brothers and sisters may get closer to God through seeing His love for us.
 
Let us then unite the different aspects of our lives to Him who loves us, that we may achieve the consistency required to be His true disciples, apostles of His love, everywhere we go.
 
Let us pray: Lord, please give us more of your love and the awareness to always be as the disciples that we are called to be. That we may show the world, through our very lives, that you are God, our loving Lord. Amen.