I WAS very
moved and impressed when a young man, now
rising in his profession, said that he accepts whatever
God has given
him or has allowed to happen to him.
An illegitimate
son, he holds no resentment or grudge
against his father who practically neglected him in his
growing up
years because the father also had some personal demons to
contend
with. Nor is he ashamed to publicly tell everyone that he
is the son
of such a father. In fact, now that the father is very
sickly, he
reaches out to his father and takes care of him,
especially because he
is now a doctor.
We can learn
great lessons from this episode. Yes, we may
be victims of some misfortune, natural or man-made, but
if our mind
and heart are in the right place, that is to say, they
are with God,
we know that everything will always work out for the
good. There’s no
reason to feel bad and to fall into worse cases of
self-pity, anger
and bitterness, hatred and desires for revenge, etc.
With God,
everything is taken care of. What we cannot take
care, God will do it for us. Of course, God’s ways are
not our ways.
They may differ greatly from what we like to happen, but
definitely
God will take care of everything. He will solve, complete
and perfect
what we cannot anymore solve, complete and perfect.
Nothing is
impossible with him. We should just trust him.
This
reassurance has been revealed to us by Christ
himself. He was willing to offer his life for our sins
and for
whatever misfortunes we can suffer in this life. And he
conquered them
all with his resurrection. If all our misfortunes are
suffered with
Christ, we for sure will also take part in the
resurrection of Christ.
Before Christ’s
supreme act of love to take care of
everything and to save us and to bring us back to God, we
already have
been reassured of this wonderful truth of God taking care
of
everything with the example of Job who was severely
tested by all
kinds of trials and misfortunes. But with his strong
faith in God, he
stood his ground and in the end was amply rewarded by
God.
We need to
toughen ourselves and cling tightly to what our
faith tells us whenever we suffer some kind of misfortune
in this
life. For this, we have nothing else to do but to try our
best, always
asking for God’s grace, to assume the mind of Christ with
respect to
his suffering and death.
Like Christ, we
should be magnanimous, always offering
kindness, compassion and mercy to those who may cause us
some
misfortunes, even the life-long types. Like Christ, we
should try to
be slow to anger and quick to forgive. Let us have the
kind of love
that Christ himself commanded us to have: to love one
another as he
himself has loved us. (cfr. Jn 13,34)
St. Paul
described this love in this way: “Love is
patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not
boast, it is not
proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not
self-seeking, it is not
easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does
not delight in
evil but rejoice with the truth. It always protects,
always trusts,
always hopes, always perseveres.” (1 Cor 13,4-8)
It is this love
that conquers everything, that identifies
us with Christ, with God. It is what enables us to
happily accept
whatever God gives us or allows to happen to us, good or
bad in human
terms.
Let us try to
always and immediately remove anything that
negates this kind of love. Let’s put all our trust in
God, and let’s
just be game with whatever situation, predicament, or
misfortune we
can have in this life.
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