Monday 20 April 2015

The Spirit of Intention

What do you intend to do in the next 5 years, 5 months, 5 days, 5 hours or 5 minutes be it a life career or vocation, a one day task of even some kind of leisure activity? It’s easy provided one has the intellectual, physical and skill capacity to achieve anything one desires. From life experience, it requires something a little more than that so as to finally reach a goal for your life’s fulfillment. It calls for the Spirit of Intention to achieve fulfillment which is beyond contentment. Many people today do things that help them achieve what they desire and live contentment than fulfillment. In fulfillment, one discovers constant growth both spiritual and intellectual which are often kept away by contentment. So ask yourelf, is what am doing today in the here and now bringing fulfillment or its easy for me to say, “Am not complaining therefore it’s okay”. The choice is yours.

I would like to draw this in the line of my 3 years of formation with the Missionaries of Africa. A great and memorable period of time though with growth-filled challenges. This first phase being for Social and Philosophical Studies, it also included other dimensions such as pastoral work, spiritual nourishment, and the human development dimensions. All these actualized in different day to day activities like community and individual prayer, sports, manual work, visiting different people in their social setups, recreation, cooking and dish washing.

To the crux of the matter, it’s easy to run through all these activities as chronologically designed by our fore-fathers without acquiring the intention of each small activity since one is more focused on the destination. Often times before I take up a simple task, I imprint in my subconscious why I want to do it. This is by asking myself the question “why take it up, and if you don’t, who will, how will I be affected and the people around me?” In this case, I am seeking the spirit of why I intend to do that I going to do.  This yields to greater creativity and growth in passion for what I want to accomplish. Just as a believer, I know that Faith and Hope in God and Charity to my brethren will bring  me salvation, what would picking up a littered piece of paper, cleaning a dish, dancing and singing with children, visiting the prison, slums and vulnerable children’s homes  (add your task) bring me and the people am reaching-out to? Or is it my responsibility done with no passion but due to routine and what other people will say?

This anyway may not need or does not need others’ remarks about what you do. Just do it as St. Paul says in 1 Cor. 16:14, “let everything you do be done in love” (NJB). This will add a gram to your talents, skills and abilities. As Martin Luther Jr. said, “after you have discovered your calling, do or live it as if God called you at this particular moment in  history to do or live it” (ref: The Measure of a man). This all requires one to be ‘in’ wholesomely to what is regarded as a responsibility in a career, vocation or task in order to live one’s desired dream.

“God does not want our deeds but the Spirit that prompts them” 
St. Theresa of Avila.

Let’s serve Humanity in good willed Spirit. God bless.


Walimbwa Teddy Richard