The curse of the gifted

LET’S be warned about this common and abidingly proximate

danger. God has given us tremendous gifts. He has made us image and

likeness of his. And so, he has given us intelligence and will,

talents and skills, and so many other endowments that we even fail to

realize.

            We always have to remember that with these gifts we are

meant to live our life with God, knowing, loving and giving him glory.

Also with these gifts, we are meant to love everybody else,

irrespective of how they are.

            We have to be most wary of our tendency to use these gifts

solely for our own purposes and interests. In other words, there’s

always the danger of using them for self-indulgence alone, instead of

giving glory to God and loving and serving others.

            This sad reality is quite rampant today as it was since

time immemorial. We cannot deny that we see many men and women who are

highly gifted with intelligence, talents, beauty, good health,

resources, power, fame, but who are simply indulging themselves with

these gifts.

            Instead of glorifying and thanking God for these gifts,

and using them to serve the others, they just enjoy themselves with

what they have. It is like they are stealing and making as their own

what actually belong to God and to the others.

            And this reality can be so self-deceiving that we hardly

would notice that we are already falling into the trap of pride,

vanity, arrogance, vainglory and the like. The charm of these gifts

can be so intoxicating that we hardly realize that we are already

splurging into some kind of sweet poison.

            This is when we can have what we may call as the curse of

the gifted, a condition of life where this anomaly becomes invincibly

embedded. What makes things worse is that precisely because of these

gifts and endowments, we can be so very clever and smart that we can

easily hide the anomalies and even mask them as something good.

            We should be constantly aware of from whom our gifts and

other endowments come, and for whom they are. For this to happen, we

have to remind ourselves of who we really are. We are not our own

creator and therefore we neither are our own creature. God is our

Creator and we are his creatures.

            Everything we have comes from him and rightly belongs to

him. We have to live our life always with God at the start, middle and

end of everything. And as a corollary, we have to live our life with

our duty to love and serve the others always in mind. We have to live

by this basic truth always.

            It would certainly require us to be humble to acknowledge

this basic truth and to start living in accordance to it. We have to

vigorously fight against our tendency to be proud and conceited that

would effectively blind us from this truth.

            In this regard, we really would need God’s grace and our

all-effort since we have to contend with tremendous enemies. The world

culture, for one, is now dominated by the evil spirit of pride and all

forms of self-glorification.

            And so, whenever we are aware of the gifts and endowments

given to us by God, especially the very special and uncommon ones, we

should not be too happy and too eager to use them unless we refer them

first to God, thanking him and asking him as to how we ought to use

them.

            We have to consider first the intention we have with

respect to these gifts. We just cannot embark on some projects and

adventure motivated only by our own purposes and interests. Such

attitude can only bring us to disaster, even if we manage, at least

for a time, to show some signs of success.

Never compromise charity

PREFER to suffer rather than compromise charity. That

should be our attitude every time we find ourselves in some heated

discussion, debate or argument, especially in matters that are open to

opinion. You can be sure you would be resembling yourselves more with

Christ than with anybody else.

            Christ preferred to suffer and eventually die rather than

defend himself or insist on the correctness of his teachings and his

actuations. He knew that man, who has been created in the image and

likeness of God, would eventually stray from the right path and would

just have to be dealt with charity. That is how man would be saved

from his—our—earthly predicament.

            Let’s remember that we are all sinners. (cfr. 1 Jn 1,8)

This predicament started even with our first parents who, in spite of

being created in the state of original justice, managed to sin. God

knows this very well, but this does not diminish his love and concern

for us. In fact, this predicament makes God to love us more by sending

his son who became man to bear all our sins and save us.

            Christ did not come to condemn us but rather to save us.

(cfr. Jn 3,17) And so he just absorbed all the mockeries, insults, the

scourging and crowning with thorns, and eventually the crucifixion.

            This is how St. Peter described the reaction of Christ in

those moments of trials: “When they hurled their insults at him he did

not retaliate. When he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he

entrusted himself to him who judges justly.” (1 Pt 2,23)

            We should just try our best, with God’s grace, to imitate

this kind of reaction in our differences and conflicts with others,

especially in matters that are open to opinion, like in our political

preferences.

            There is no need to be adamant in our views and opinions,

because no matter how strongly we feel about our thinking, we do not

have the exclusive possession of what is right and wrong, what is fair

and unfair. Even those who we are sure to be wrong in their views,

have some valid reasons for their opinions.

            Let’s never forget that in the life of Christ, even those

who betrayed him and persecuted him till death, had a role to play in

the providence of God. We can cite the example of Caiaphas, the high

priest at that time, who according to the gospel prophesized that it

was better for one man to die than for the whole Jewish nation to

perish. (cfr. Jn 11,50)

            Thus, in our effort to uphold what we think is right over

wrong, what is true over the untrue, what is fair over the unfair, let

us never fall into what is called as bitter zeal that would compromise

charity that is essential in our life.

            Yes, we can be forceful in promoting and defending our

views, but let’s never forget that in doing so, it is never licit nor

moral for us to fall into any act that goes against charity.

            This is obviously not easy to do, given our wounded

condition. That is why we have to wage a continuing struggle to

identify ourselves more and more with Christ, asking for grace,

developing the proper attitudes, virtues and skills, and learning to

make many self-denials as Christ himself encouraged us to do.

            We should be ready to suffer and to experience what is

considered as loss and defeat in human terms. Christ also ‘failed’

when he was made to die on the cross, but he resurrected and won for

us what is most important in our life.

            We should not be easily deceived by the momentary earthly

and temporal perks that can compromise our eternal salvation. We have

to learn to be sport and always constructive in our reactions.

Let’s always be friendly

WE should try our best to be friendly always with

everyone. Irrespective of how they are—and this can include those who

in our human standards we consider to be unlikable, or who have done

us wrong, or who are even hostile to us—we should just try our best to

be friendly with them.

            And the reason is because that is what Christ commanded to

do. “Love your neighbor as I have loved you,” he said, and we know

that his love covered everyone, including the enemies. His love has a

universal scope. Even in his passion and death, he managed to offer

forgiveness to those who crucified him.

            Of course, the ultimate basis for this Christian duty is

that regardless of our differences and even our conflicts, we are all

brothers and sisters. We form one family, we all come from the same

source and are meant to have a common end. We therefore are meant to

care for one another, to be responsible for one another.

            We have to develop the appropriate skills to carry out

this duty. We have to start with the most elementary requirement of

always being nice to everyone. In this regard, we have to overcome the

usual differences we have in our human condition. We have to be

pro-active in this regard, not waiting for the others to merit our

friendship. We should try to live out what St. Paul once said: “To be

all things to all men…”

            That is why we need to strengthen our will to carry out

this duty. We should not just depend on some favorable conditions

before we start to be friendly. We should not be friendly only to

those who are nice to us or to those who please us in some way. We

have to train ourselves to be indiscriminate in our friendliness even

as we also train ourselves to be discriminating in our dealings with

everyone.

            Gestures of affections, no matter how small and

insignificant, always count. Our friendship should be not only

intentional and theoretical. It should be tangible, seen and felt.

Smiling, greeting, engaging in some small talk go a long way to start

and keep our friendships going. We have to learn the many social

skills of always being warm and welcoming of everyone.

            Of course, this is easier said than done. Thus, we really

need to train ourselves, using both the supernatural and human means,

the spiritual and the material means. This may strike as something

awkward to do at the beginning, but then if we try again to consider

the necessity of such training, such awkwardness will disappear.

            Everyday we have to train ourselves to develop a keen

interest in the others, especially in those cases where due to some

natural and human reasons no big interest can be felt at the

beginning. This is the challenge we have to face everyday. But once we

manage to do this, we would be on the way to becoming friendly to

everyone irrespective of how they are.

            We may have to force ourselves to be interested in knowing

more and more about the others, even ‘wasting’ time with them since

friendship will also require a lot of time. We should see to it that

we just don’t give some cursory attention to them. Our attention to

them should be full. We have to make every effort to be directly in

touch with them, and not simply relying on technological

communication.

            Obviously, for friendship to blossom we really have to

pray and to offer sacrifices for the others. We should be willing to

be patient with them, especially if for one reason or another we are

made to suffer in some way in the process.

            Yes, we need the grace of God to learn how to be friendly

always with everyone.