Let’s be cheerful givers

LET’S be cheerful givers as much as we can, because

according to St. Paul, God loves them. In whatever we do or give, we

should do so without sadness or compulsion, he said. (cfr  2 Cor

9,6-7) Things have to be done freely. “Freely you have received,

freely you have to give,” Christ said. (Mt 10,8)

            We have to learn to be generous and to give not only

things but our very own selves as gifts to others. St. Paul reassures

us that if we sow sparingly we will also reap sparingly. But if we sow

bountifully, we will also reap bountifully.

            This logic echoes what Christ himself said: “Give, and it

will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together

and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure

you use, it will be measured to you.” (Lk 6,38)

            And again, “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or

sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake

will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.”

(Mt 19,29)

            Let’s not be afraid to give ourselves to others as

generously as possible, without counting the cost. God cannot be

outdone in generosity, one saint said, with the abundant spiritual

fruit of his work as proof to that assertion.

            And let’s be generous without expecting any return for

others, not even some acknowledgment from them. Christ himself

practically told this to us when he said: “Take care not to perform

your righteous deeds in order that people may see them. Otherwise, you

will have no recompense from your heavenly Father.” (Mt 6,1)

            That’s right. We have to learn how to pass unnoticed while

doing a lot of good. We have to do battle with the present obsession

many people have of wanting to be seen and praised and honored.

            This will help us to have purity of intention in our good

deeds and to avoid being corrupted by worldly allurements. This will

help us to stay focused on our eternal destination which is heaven and

to avoid getting stranded in some worldly thing or place.

            When we are cheerful in our self-giving, it can only mean

that we are doing things really out of love for God and for others.

And we can have focus, eagerness and perseverance in the performance

of good things.

            This does not mean that we would avoid suffering

completely. We will always have it one way or another. But when we are

cheerful, we will always get some measure of relief. The awareness

itself that we are doing things out of love for God and for others

will always have a way of filling our heart with joy and peace.

            This generous and cheerful spirit does not contradict the

requirements of prudence, understood as prudence of the spirit and not

prudence of the flesh or worldly prudence.

            Though we may appear to be a failure according to worldly

standards, let’s be convinced that being a cheerful giver as

envisioned by St. Paul is worth all the effort.

The hidden treasure and the pearl of great price

TWO of the parables of Christ can give us precious lessons about how

we ought to prioritize things in our life. We know that we can have

many competing interests and it’s important that we have the proper

priorities in life. We have to be wary of the many conditionings that

we are exposed to these days, since they can throw us into confusion.

            These are the parables of the hidden treasure and the

pearl of great price in the Gospel of St. Matthew. (13,44-46) “The

kingdom of heaven,” Christ said, “is like treasure hidden in a field,

which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells

all that he has and buys that field.”

            Following it is a similar parable: “The kingdom of heaven

is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl

of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”

            These parables find an echo in some words of St. Paul who

said: “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of

knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of

all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain

Christ…” (Phil 3,8)

            How important therefore that we realize that our first

priority should be God and our relationship with him which should be

sustained with the constant effort to know, love and serve him! We

should be ready to throw away everything else that can stand in the

way.

            We have to make some adjustments in the way we order our

objective needs. We have to distinguish them from our subjective likes

and desires that can only be the product of some personal or social

preferences. In this we have to employ the appropriate means, the

relevant programs and operations. We should be demanding on ourselves

insofar as this matter is concerned.

            We need God first of all, and, in fact, all the time. He

is our most important objective need, much more and infinitely more

than we need air, food, rest, pleasures, etc. For without God, we are

nothing. But with him, we can have everything. That is why, St. Teresa

Avila boldly said:  “He who has God lacks nothing. God alone is

sufficient.”

            We need to learn how to find God in everything we do or we

see, handle or get involved in. In this, we have to be pro-active. We

should not wait for some inspiration to come or some so-called

favourable or conducive circumstances to take place. We have to

actively look for him or create the occasion. We can always do this,

because God himself empowers us to do so.

            For this to happen, everyday we have to strongly set our

mind to find, love and serve God. We may have to spend time meditating

on this most important and objective need of ours, if only to know how

to uphold this basic need amid the many other needs and likes that can

undermine it.

            We should be ready to detach ourselves from anything that

can prevent us from looking for God. In this, we are expected to do

some kind of violence in the tenor of Christ’s words: “The kingdom of

heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.” (Mt 11,12)

It’s the violence of love referred to here.

            But actually, if we have the faith, we would know how to

relate everything to God, since everything is relatable to God. They

need not be competitors of God, but rather channels to God.

            Let us ask the Holy Spirit who is always by our side,

prompting us all the time so that we can find our way to God through

our many and changing earthly concerns.

Integrity and our emotions

IT’S definitely a lifelong affair. We can never say we

already enjoy integrity in this life, because in the next breath we

would already know that we have to struggle to keep at least some

semblance of it.

            Such is our condition here in this life. The best that we

can say is that it is a dynamic thing, and that we can only have it in

a very tentative way. We have to keep fighting for it.

            Integrity is all about a sense of completeness and

wholeness as well as order, harmony, consistency, honesty, etc. All of

these we would enjoy if our first parents did not fall into sin. This

was how God created us in the beginning. But since we lost that state

of original justice, we would have to work it out with God’s help, of

course.

            That is why we have to understand that any pursuit of this

ideal of integrity has to start and end with God. Any understanding of

integrity outside of this would already be compromised right from the

start. Being our Creator in whose image and likeness we have been

created, God is the ultimate foundation, source and goal of our

integrity.

            Thus, we cannot overemphasize the need for God and the

ways we can be with God in order to have some kind of integrity in our

life. Especially in the area of the senses and emotions, we have to

learn how to discipline them and submit them to the dictates of reason

that in turn should be submitted to the impulses of our Christian

faith, hope and charity.

            St. Paul already vividly described to us the serious

predicament we are in regarding this. “I do not do the good I want,”

he said, “but the evil I do not want is what I do…I see in my members

another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to

the law of sin which dwells in my members.” (Rom 7,19.23)

            He followed this dark assessment with the following words:

“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

Then he gave his own answer: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ

our Lord!” (Rom 7,24-25)

            We need to educate our feelings and emotions to discern

the ultimate object and purpose of our life, who is God. They should

not be allowed to be simply led by the impulses of our hormones,

instincts and the many unclear trends and conditionings in the

environment.

            Our feelings and emotions have to be guided by our higher

faculties of intelligence and will that in turn should also be guided

by faith, hope and charity. They have to be trained to see God in

everything, and to be happy and even excited with Him.

            Otherwise, they would just be stranded and entangled with

the material qualities of things or with the different worldly

conditionings we have. In this way, we become insensitive to anything

spiritual, much less, supernatural realities.

            Integrity is when our feelings and emotions learn to find,

love and serve God in any situation we may be in.

Graciousness

WE have to develop a life of graciousness. This means that

more than relying on our human powers and the things of nature, we

should rely on God’s grace that can do much more than what our human

powers and the things of nature can.

            We should not be surprised if by relying mainly on God’s

grace, things may appear to us as inhuman and unnatural. We just have

to be convinced that they are not. But yes, they can go beyond, but

not contradict, what our human reason can know and understand and what

can be considered by us as natural.

            A life of graciousness depends more on God’s words than on

our own reasoning. Remember Christ saying clearly: “It is written,

‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from

the mouth of God.’” (Mt 4,4)

            It’s not that we don’t need bread and everything else that

is connoted by that word. Human as we are, we will always need them.

But as children of God, we need much more than bread.

            We have to remind ourselves often of these words of

Christ, especially nowadays when we seem to be producing a lot of

things and are distancing ourselves from God and his word. We are

starting to feel that we do not need God anymore, or that we need him

less and less. We seem to get easily drunk with our own

accomplishments.

            A life of graciousness can be described in the following

words of Christ: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye

and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, offer no resistance to one

who is evil. When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the

other one to him as well. If anyone wants to go to law with you over

your tunic, hand him your cloak as well. Should anyone press you into

service for one mile, go with him for two miles.” (Mt 5,38-41)

            It’s a life of full trust in God’s word that would lead us

to be patient, humble, magnanimous, merciful, etc. It’s a life that is

full of goodness, where anger, hatred, resentment, envy have no place.

It’s a life that is not afraid of suffering nor of death. It’s a life

where we always think well of the others and where we are willing to

reach out to them, even if we do not get anything in return.

            Justice, of course, can and should be pursued in this

life. But it is pursued in strict charity and truth. It is a kind of

justice that is not perturbed even if injustice is committed.

            A life of graciousness acts out all the beatitudes

articulated by Christ. It is poor in spirit, meek, pure of heart, firm

and cheerful even if persecuted and insulted, hungry and thirsty of

righteousness.

            As St. Peter in his first letter would put it, he does not

repay evil with evil, or insult with insult. Rather he repays evil

with a blessing. (cfr 3,9)

            It’s a life where God’s grace reigns supreme rather than

our own power and reasoning.