Be poor to be truly rich

THIS is what Christ proposed to his disciples, and now to us. We need to be poor, to be detached from earthly things, so we can be filled with what truly enriches us. (cfr. Mk 10,28-31) 

 “Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come,” he said. 

 We have to understand well these words which at first sight can plunge us to disbelief, since we all know that we need brothers, sisters, parents, children, friends and everyone else in our life. We need houses and money and other material resources. God himself said that we have to love everyone, including our enemies. 

 He also wants us to “subdue the earth.” (cfr. Gen 1,28) We certainly need to be immersed in the things of the world if we want to subdue the earth. This can only mean that we have to deal with the things of the world, not to stay away from them. 

 What Christ’s words mean is that nothing and no one in the world, even those who are close to us, should replace our exclusive love for God that would actually give us the proper and inclusive love for everyone and everything in the world. 

 It’s when we fail to begin and end with God and to be with him in the whole course of life that we would put ourselves in danger, and of failing the gain God himself and everyone and everything in our life. 

 For us to live by this indication of Christ, we certainly need to continually rectify our intentions as we go through all our temporal and earthly affairs. We know how easily we can be trapped in the things of the world and forget the real way of dealing with them. 

 We easily think that by forgetting God or putting him aside in our earthly affairs, and then giving our full attention on the technical aspects of our affairs, we would be achieving our true fulfillment, when in fact, it would be a real loss. Such attitude toward our earthly affairs can only show that we are attached to the things of this world and that God is actually not important to us, he who is our “all in all,” as he should be. 

 How then should our attitude be toward the things of the world? It is to love them the way God loves them. 

 We have to embody that attitude articulated in the gospel of St. John: “For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believes in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting.” (Jn 3,16) 

 It’s a love that carries out what God, its creator, commanded our first parents to do: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it…” (Gen 1,28) “To subdue the earth” does not only mean to master and dominate it, or merely to make use and take advantage of it, although all these go into that divine command. In fact, we have to develop as much as possible the good potentials of the world. 

 Our worldly affairs should be motivated only by love for God, and with that love, we can love everybody and everything else properly! It’s that love which can gain us a hundredfold of what Christ promised us and of eternal life itself. This is how we can be poor to be truly rich.

Mary helps us to be docile to the Holy Spirit

LET’S use some legal jargon to bring out the truth of our faith about how Our Lady can help us to be docile to the Holy Spirit. 

 Whereas, God always intervenes in our life through Christ in the Spirit because he is our Creator and Father who will always be with us; 

 Whereas, it is always God who directs our life to its ultimate end which is to be with him in heaven for all eternity; 

 Whereas, our life is supposed to be a life in the Spirit, since we are meant to share the very life and nature of God, and for this reason, the Spirit continually prompts us as to what to think, understand, react, etc. to all the events and circumstances of our life; 

 Whereas, Our Lady, conceived immaculate, i.e., without original sin, enjoyed the perfect condition to obey and follow the will of God as evidenced during the Annunciation, and all throughout her life; 

 We can only conclude that Mary, Our Lady, is our best guide to discern and follow the constant promptings of the Holy Spirit in our life. We should always go to Our Lady if we want to discern what the Holy Spirit is prompting us and to follow his promptings continually. With her, we are led to Christ, to God. 

 All this because Mary is not only the Mother of Christ, and therefore can be rightly called as the Mother God. She is truly also our Mother since Christ gave her to be our Mother through St. John just before he died on the cross. St. John took her home but it was she who took care of him and the rest of the apostles who were in fear just after Christ’s death. 

 She truly also cares for us now as our Mother. And she does it the way she took care of Christ. She it was who understood Christ the best. She is the best teacher we can have in knowing, understanding and loving Christ. Her constant observation and pondering in her heart of what she saw in Christ is the perfect way we ought to follow in relating ourselves to Christ. 

 She is actually present in all aspects of our life, since as a mother who is already in heaven, she involves herself completely in our life, be it in the spiritual, moral or material aspects. She is never indifferent to our conditions, our varying situations and predicaments. She loves us with a human and supernatural heart, always oozing with human affection as well as divine love. 

 She is always around, especially during our difficulties. She is not scandalized by our sins and dirt, but as a mother she is eager to clean us up. With all the privileges given to her by God, she can always do all these things. 

 If need be, she will make extraordinary interventions in our life as when she makes special apparitions if only to convey an urgent message to us. And with her, things will always turn out well, since God cannot refuse her appeals on our behalf, as shown in that first miracle of Christ during the wedding at Cana. 

 We have to learn to deal with her, developing a deep, most childlike devotion to her. We can ask ourselves: how many times have we gone to her today? How often do we express our devotion to her during the day, from morning to night? How do we fulfil the many Marian acts of piety? Do we try to make a new loving effort every day to converse with her?

To be all things to all men

THAT’S from a passage in 1 Corinthians 9,22. It’s the ideal condition for us to pursue. It’s what would truly identify us with Christ, the pattern of our humanity and the savior of our damaged humanity, who is the very embodiment of this ideal. 

 Though each one of us is supposed to be a unique person, there is also something in us, a certain faculty and power, that would enable us to reach that ideal. It’s the spiritual dimension of our life and nature, endowed with intelligence and will, that would enable us to transcend our distinctive and unique character in order to have a mind and heart with a universal scope. 

 To top it all, we also are given the very grace of God, a sharing of God’s power, that would allow us to be “all in all” (cfr. 1 Cor 15,28) as God is. We just have to be aware of these endowments and gifts, and learn how to make full use of them in accordance to God’s will and ways. We are capable of having a universal heart and mind. 

 Yes, we may have our own tastes and preferences, our own temperaments and personalities, our own views and opinions, our own charism and vocation, or whatever status we have, but we have the duty to reach out to everyone, especially those who are different from us or even are opposed to us. They can even be opposed to God. 

 In this way, we would be imitating Christ who was willing to bear all our sins, as St. Paul said, to save all men. (cfr 1 Tim 2,4) This is the only purpose that can bring about the development of a universal heart. Short of this motive, the ideal of a universal heart that is proper to us is compromised. 

 Toward this end, we have to learn how to be patient, how to rise above our personal things and learn how to give our heart to God and to everybody else. This obviously will require of us a certain sportsmanship, a certain toughness that is of the kind that can welcome and accommodate the charity of God in our heart. 

We have to learn to listen and not just hear others, to look and not just to see them. We have to learn how to suffer with the others, how to be compassionate, how to make as our own the conditions of the others out of the love of God and souls. God himself did all these. 

 He made himself man in Christ to save us. And Christ, according to St. Paul, made himself like sin without committing sin (cfr 2 Cor 5,21), just to be with us and lead us back to God, from whom we came and to whom we belong. 

 So, in our dealings with the others, we should always be motivated by love. We have to take the initiative to love them and not wait for them to give reasons for us to love them. Even when they commit errors, all the more we should love them. 

 In the Psalms, we read that God “does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.” (103,10) If that is how God looks at us, that should also be how we should look at the others. We ourselves ask God not to judge us by our sins. Neither should we judge others according to their sins.