Category: Harmonizing our lives with our maker’s designs

Time’s Up

One way of describing life is growing and changing. Maybe it should only be changing, because growing, at least in the bodily sense, slows down and stops after a while.
   But growing in the senses of thinking, understanding, improving, bettering, accomplishing, and achieving can continue long after physical growth ends and even while physically we are declining and diminishing.
   Death means the end of all growth and development, at least as we know and experience them now. But, in a spiritual dimension, we may believe and trust that they continue in some other, yet to be experienced, way.
   We sometimes joke about the incessant questioning of little children: Why is this? Where does it come from? How does it work? etc. That means they’re growing in terms of knowledge and understanding.
   Hopefully, they will never stop questioning, never stop challenging, never stop growing in their thinking and understanding.
   If they, if we, do reach a certain stage of life where we no longer question, challenge, grow, or change in our thinking and understanding, we are, so to speak, dying or dead!
   It’s odd. We esteem and acclaim explorers, discoverers, inventors, scientists, artists, and innovators in many areas and aspects of our life but criticize dissidents, eccentrics, oddballs, nonconformists, and “heretics” (in its original meaning of people of different opinion) in others.
   In the unending quest for knowledge and understanding, we sometimes get it right and we sometimes get it wrong—but, the main thing is to never stop trying. There’s nothing wrong in making mid-course corrections in the way we live our lives.
   We’re not perfect, infallible, nor omniscient.

   No matter how much we may achieve, how much we may understand, how much we may sacrifice, how much we may love, how much others may respond to us, it will never be enough and we will never be fully satisfied.
   This is all part of the human condition. There’s no sense in lamenting the deficiencies of our past or the limitations of our present. It’s rare to learn to skate without falling down, to learn to do anything new without getting it wrong from time to time.
   The very essence of our lives is growing and changing. If fear of mistakes or failures holds us back from growing or changing, we gradually are living in an unreality; we are gradually dying in more ways than one.
   The greatest challenge for each of us is to learn to celebrate, rejoice, and have gladness, peace, and satisfaction in our lives—in our limited, ever changing, and imperfect lives.
   Especially we need to remember, know and be grateful for the understanding, empathy, support, and love we have received throughout our lives from others—and above all from the One who created us, whose mercy and love is without limits, and whose providence sustains and guides our lives.
   Let us pray, imitating St. Ignatius of Loyola:

Lord, teach me to be generous.
Teach me to serve you as you deserve;
to give and not to count the cost;
to fight and not to heed the wounds;
to toil and not to seek for rest;
to labor and not to seek any reward,
save that of knowing that I do your will.

 

25 July 2021

The Fairest One of All

   Come, let us sing to the Lord and shout with joy to the Rock who saves us.
   Let us approach him with praise and thanksgiving and sing joyful songs to the Lord.

   Is this a good description of how we relate to God? Singing? Joyful? Praising? Thanking?
   Alas, more often than not it’s something like,
   “Let us cringe before the Lord and beg forgiveness from the One who judges us. Let us hide from him in fear and trembling, with sorrow for our failures, overwhelmed by our guilt.”

   I will bless your name for ever. I will bless you day after day and praise your name for ever.
   The Lord is great highly to be praised, his greatness cannot be measured….

   The Lord is kind and full of compassion, slow to anger, abounding in love.
   How good is the Lord to all, compassionate to all his creatures.

   Why are we so masochistic? Why do we tend to be so self-destructive? Why do we seem to find pleasure in self-denial, self-accusation, shame, and the like?
   Why, when we have a choice of what path to take, do we choose the way to the garbage dump over the flower garden?
   We need to learn to stop looking at and evaluating ourselves first and foremost. We have to learn to stop imitating the evil queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, who asks, “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?”
   Why don’t we learn to look first at God and see wonder, beauty, and goodness instead giving a priority to a morbid fascination with our own limitations, failings, and weaknesses?

   Why is that we scurry to find new concealment when the stone that covers and weighs down our lives is removed?

   Great are the works of the Lord: to be pondered by all who love them.
   Majestic and glorious his work, his justice stands firm for ever.
   He makes us remember his wonders. The Lord is compassion and love.

   Excessive preoccupation with our own ignorance, weaknesses, and failures is a dead end street. Our Maker knows each of us better than we can know ourselves. We are imperfect, but, even so, we are loved.
   The child who is scared, hurt, crying, or overwhelmed, sometimes reaches up with arms outstretched to be picked up and held tight in an embrace of security and love.

   “Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

   Let’s not think of the “Last Judgement” as a court room scene. God is not to be imagined as the All Powerful seated on a throne above. There is no prosecutor pointing the finger to each and every one of our failings nor any human jury to tender a unanimous verdict of guilty.
   We need to learn to imitate the helplessness of the little child who knows no other recourse then to reach up. We need to reach out with complete trust to the One who is the very source of love itself.

   Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.


11 July 2021

Don’t Stunt Your Growth

That was a warning I remember hearing from time to time when I was a kid to discourage certain behaviors, whether it involved eating, drinking, smoking, or something else.
   The presumption was that growth was a good thing and it was foolish to impede it.
   I have some friends (of modest height) whose children are much taller than they are, probably because the parents grew up in another country with a less healthy childhood diet. But they’re glad to see their kids growing taller and stronger than they are.
   Intellectual development is similar to the physical. Often children with better and more extensive schooling than their parents have better opportunities for the future.
   Generally mothers and fathers are not jealous of their children’s achievements and successes but proud of them. Of course, it’s because they consider their children’s growth and development as a good thing.
   However, in some matters, it’s just the opposite. If the children’s religious beliefs and practices change as they grow and develop, often the parents are distressed.
   Sometimes it may seem to the parents that their children are ignoring or abandoning vital elements in their religious life. Perhaps they are—or perhaps they’re simply outgrowing certain ethnic or cultural customs and practices.
   For example, is it so bad if a young person is keenly concerned about working for justice and peace but not so worried about missing a Mass on Sunday or praying the rosary?
   Growth, growing, involves change—not necessarily an abandonment of what we once were but a development, a maturation.
   St. Paul wrote, “When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things.” (1 Cor 13:11)

   Why sometimes are we so threatened by putting aside and outgrowing things from an earlier stage of our lives? Why sometimes do we defend and cling too long to past ways and thinking?
   Not every change in advocating and reasoning is necessarily an improvement or a positive development, but denying their validity and refusing to consider them isn’t necessarily an improvement or a positive development either.
   There was another warning I remember hearing from time to time when I was a kid: Don’t talk about politics or religion.
   Probably, this was because of the lived experience of those warning us about how delicate and personal these matters were.
   Right now, especially in the U.S., there is a painful polarization and division in both these areas—and the solution is not to be silent and do nothing.
   If in either of these areas we’re talking, thinking, or reasoning “as a child”—i.e. clinging too much to earlier ideas—we need to put aside childish things.
   It’s a don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater situation. The best course of action is not necessarily to cling to and defend every past thing or practice, but to discern what is good and perennial from the limited understandings and decisions of a particular group or time.
   Our roots are more important than the details of a branch. Our fundamental values merit our defense, but not necessarily every decision, plan, program, ruling, or behavior once inspired by them.
   The child and the adult are fundamentally the same person—but in the process of growing necessarily many things change.


6 June 2021

Master Class

None of us lives as his own master and none of us dies as his own master. While we live we are responsible to the Lord, and when we die we die as his servants. Both in life and death we are the Lord’s. (Romans 14:7-8)

   A short reading for Morning Prayer began with these few words. They always stir my heart and provoke my thinking no matter how many times I see or hear them.
   Whether we agree with them or not is radically decisive about the course of our lives, the structure of our values, and all our expectations for the future.
   They are a brief statement of our essential identity. We’re not self-made, we’re not a mere byproduct of an act of love or passion, we’re not anything we may wish to be
   We are created—and even though we may yearn or feel free to be and do whatever we wish, this contradicts our essential structure and design. If that is how we try to live our lives, we don’t know who and what we are, and we are not realizing the fulness of our true potential.
   One way or another, we all, at least from time to time, are engaged in the search for meaning. for the purpose, direction, and destiny of our lives.
   The quest can be uncomfortable, frightening, or dismaying as we try to look ahead, depending on what we see or don’t see. But, we must be who and what we are, and we are limited in what we can do or achieve.
   It’s not necessarily a grim or sad story. The quest for meaning can lead us to begin to perceive our limitations not so much as personal failures or lack of success as part of our essence and design.
   It seems illogical that the complex reality of a living human person could be merely a result of a long-term process of gradual or abrupt random changes and mutations.

   Also, it seems logical that the effect must somehow have a cause that is at least equal to or greater than the effect itself.
   In other words, the quest for meaning can lead to something greater than ourselves and beyond our full understanding—as is the very universe itself.
   In our less religious age we recourse to sometimes trendy, but ultimately almost unintelligible words and concepts like, e.g., the Big Bang theory. In earlier ages unknown forces and powers were conceived of as the work of superior beings, divinities.
   In the Jewish-Christian-Muslim traditions, this gradually led to the realization and belief that this inevitably demanded an ultimate power, a supreme divinity.
   That’s what we have come to mean by God. Greater than anything or anyone other, more powerful than any other power, more understanding, compassionate, generous, merciful, and loving.
   And this is not merely a kind of philosophical theory or theological speculation. It has gradually emerged in the traditions and development of the world’s great religions. It’s shared human patrimony is not to be underestimated.
   When Paul wrote his letter to the Judeo-Christian community of imperial Rome, he used a good word to summarize all this quest for meaning and purpose, “Master”.
   Notice he didn’t say God is the Master of everyone, starting with the most difficult and demanding concept of all, “God”. He simply stated the obvious and logical to him, the common human experience: None of us lives as his own master and none of us dies as his own master.
   And, this great truth has consequences!


9 May 2021

Can’t See the Forest for the Trees

This is an expression that we may use to describe someone who is so deeply involved in the details of something that they lose sight of the overall, the big picture.
   The movie, “The Bridge on the River Kwai”, was a great example of this. British soldiers are in a WWII Japanese prison camp. For the sake of their physical health and overall morale, their commanding officer leads them in constructing a bridge over the nearby river, demanded by the Japanese camp commander.
   When the completed bridge is targeted for destruction by the British army, the prisoners’ commander, so deeply committed to the success of his project, blindly tries to impede the British action.
   Losing sight of the forest because of the trees is always a danger for anyone, especially responsible, thorough, and thoughtful people. One can get so absorbed in the details of some construction, task, investigation, or analysis that it’s easy to lose sight of the overall goal—or even impede it.
   “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” We shouldn’t get so immersed in what we are doing that we lose track of our overall goal. There’s only so much time, opportunity, and resources available to us.
Don’t spend so much time packing carefully that you miss the vacation flight!
   There is a high degree of specialization in the field of medical care. There can be doctors who are so highly skilled in some very specialized medical fields that they almost lose sight of overall threats to the health, wellbeing, and life obligations of their patient.
   This can happen in all fields, not just the medical. With all due respect, it seems to me that something similar sometimes happens in the religious field as well—to preachers, writers, theologians, biblical scholars, canonists, historians, and those with special ecclesiastical responsibilities.

   Generally in the Eastern churches, the cross as a symbol of victory is often a golden or even bejeweled emblem. In the Western church, it is usually the crucifix, the cross with the tortured body of Jesus affixed.
   During the Easter Triduum, we remember and celebrate in great detail—the passion narrative—the final few days and hours of Jesus’s life. Sometimes it seems that we’re so celebrating the details of the price he paid that we almost neglect why and for what purpose he paid the price.
   Jesus didn’t seek or want to suffer or to die. Remember his prayer in the agony of the garden. He only sought to do the Father’s will, no matter what the cost.
   Your goal and mine is not to be crucified, or to suffer, or to live a sacrificial life. Our goal is to live, to love, to serve, to celebrate and give thanks for the wonder of God’s works, and above all, as Jesus, to seek to do God’s will—no matter what, nor what the cost.
   To become so fascinated, to empathize so deeply with the details of the price he paid can—not necessarily but may—distract us from his overall purpose. Even in this, we can lose sight of the forest because of the trees!
   In our rapidly changing and divided and contesting world, we may become so comfortable, engaged, and defensive of certain concerns, values, customs, procedures, persons or institutions, that we may be in danger of losing sight of the overall goal or purpose that they once and may or may not still help us attain.
   The harder you work, the greater sacrifice you make, the more responsible you may be—beware of not seeing the forest!


25 April 2021

When the Hurlyburly’s Done

Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth opens with a brief scene where three witches, the Norns of Scandinavian mythology, allude to Macbeth’s future:

When the hurlyburly’s done.
When the battle’s lost and won.

   We each spend the whole course of lives with the hurlyburly, with the battle, with the ever-present, daily struggle to live and to live well.
   It is our duty, our doom, our fate. The Genesis story describes it as a kind of punishment for the first man (3:17-19):

Cursed is the ground because of you!
In toil you shall eat its yield
   all the days of your life.
Thorns and thistles it shall bear for you,
   and you shall eat the grass of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
   you shall eat bread,
Until you return to the ground,
   from which you were taken;
For you are dust,
   and to dust you shall return.

   Our busy lives are driven not only by our desire to conform them to the will of God but also out of a sense of responsibility for ourselves and others and for the world in which we live.
   When in the course of our lives we have done all that is humanly possible, have achieved all that we possibly can, at the end we have to shift gears.
   At the end, all is out of our control. We’re in unfamiliar territory. The rules have changed.
   We face the unknown, the final stage of our lives with a mixture of helplessness and confidence, blindness and insight, fear and trust, weakness and strength, resistance and acceptance, turmoil and peace.

   When the hurlyburly of our life is done, when for better or for worse our life’s battle is over, when whatever victory we have achieved is past, we are called to a final, total surrender. This abandonment to the mercy and love of God is the final challenge of our earthly life.
   But, till that end comes, we still have to work, bear burdens, struggle to do what is right, and patiently endure.
   A farmer may trust that God will bring growth and fruitfulness to the seed, but the farmer needs to work—to plow, prepare, plant, cultivate, and be vigilant through spring and summer till harvest.
   Dying is hard and challenging, not because we lack faith, hope, love, or trust in the love and mercy of God, but because we’re used to living “by the sweat of your brow”; we’re used to defining our lives by our doing, working, accomplishing, achieving.
   In the sometimes exaggerated tales of saints, they sometimes sound ethereal, childlike, and floating in a sort of never-never land. But, that’s not real life.
   We live with total confidence in God—but to live means to work, strive, sacrifice, love, enjoy, give thanks, aid, assist, achieve, create, and many other things.
   As Ecclesiastes would say, there is a time for living, and a time for dying. We are very used to and have much experience of the time for living, but we have no personal experience of the time for dying before that unique time comes.
   When that day comes, the paradox is our life’s battle, too, will be both lost and won. We’re called to fight the good fight of life to the very end, and then we’re called to surrender ourselves to God.


28 March 2021

Just Imagine

Imagination usually refers to the ability to create mental images of things that do not yet exist and hypothetical future scenarios that could exist. It’s a vital ingredient of creativity.
Creative imagination is a necessary component of every field of human endeavor and the inspiration for invention and innovation.
What would science, art, philosophy or theology be like without it? Without it, persons, families, societies, and institutions may decline, wither, and lose vitality.
Imagination is fundamentally a good, although we can imagine good things or bad things, good scenarios or bad ones. Imagination can be at the root of great innovations and of great destructions.
But, oh how sad and confining it is not to have a lively imagination, not to be creative nor innovative, not to be inspiring or ground-breaking.
And, in spite of every effort to do so, you can’t ban or control imagination. Nothing is unthinkable, even though many choices, activities, and deeds may be turn out to be inappropriate, regrettable, harmful, or destructive.
In many sectors of life, there have been failed attempts to control information, beliefs, interactions, freedoms, and creativity—they’re often bad and ultimately unsuccessful.
Let’s be a little imaginative in some areas of religious practice . . . and remembering that just because a thing never happened doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t.
– Married clergy: Can priests or ministers be married? Of course? From the beginning of Christianity, married men have been ordained priests in the Eastern churches, both Catholics and Orthodox, There certainly have been married men with leading ministerial roles in many Christian churches for many years.

– Female clergy: Can women be priests? In some branches of Christianity the practice is already well established. Can women be bishops? (Same answer.) Imagine a woman as a cardinal. Why not? A cardinal is a papal elector. Could a woman be pope?
– Sabbath observance: Christians are church-centered in their worship. Observant Jews are home and family centered. Can Christian observance be more like the Jewish? Imagine the head of a family leading a weekly eucharistic (Thanksgiving) ceremony at home.
– Marriage: Marriage involves a mutual choice and bonding of persons and traditionally has to do with having and raising a family. If the choice and bonding don’t exist anymore, does the marriage exist? What does it take for the civil authority to acknowledge that it is over? What should it take for the ecclesiastical authority to do the same? Should they?
– Human sexuality: Is it or should it be restricted to marriage? Is it by nature or should it be limited to acts of mating or procreation? Should sexual bonding be allowed to persons of the same sex? What about same-sex marriage?
– Respect life: Do we respect a right to life of the baby in the womb? When can a war be just? What about assisting suicide? Capital punishment? How do we strike a balance in a divided and pluralistic society? Can morality be legislated?
– Justice issues: Do I believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all? Am I or should I be concerned about legislative oversight and support for these values?
Just imagine a little what could, should, shouldn’t, or might happen.


24 January 2021

Thomases Can Be Good and Tough

They often call St. Thomas the doubting apostle, but do you realize how daunting, not doubting, he and many of his namesakes have been?
Thomas the apostle is quoted only four times in the New Testament and all four times in the Gospel according to John.
– When Jesus heard the news of the death of Lazarus, he was across the Jordan, After two days, he decided to risk returning to Judea. The disciples counseled him not to go, reminding him that many wanted to stone him to death. It was Thomas who bravely, maybe brashly, rebuked his fellow disciples, “Let us also go to die with him.”
– During the last supper, Jesus spoke to the apostles about his “going away” and their ultimately rejoining him. It was Thomas who bluntly questioned him, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?”
– After Jesus’ post-resurrection appearance to the apostles in Thomas’s absence, Thomas boldly demanded proof of what they excitedly were telling him: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
– A week later, when he saw the risen Jesus with his own eyes, he attested, “My Lord and my God!”
It was this same Thomas who proclaimed the Good News to the east, who went to the scattered Jewish trading posts in southern India and, as Paul in the West, preached first to his fellow Jews and then to the local folk, implanting Christianity in India.
Doubting is a mischaracterization of Thomas the apostle—a better description would be fair-minded, logical, reasonable, courageous, dedicated, and dauntless!
Many a holy namesake of his had similar qualities, like Thomas Becket, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas à Kempis, Thomas More, and many more.

Two of them were the subjects of beautiful and very moving films, “Becket” and “A Man for All Seasons”.
Thomas Becket (1118-1170), the unlikely saint (as are most such), although ordained a deacon in his youth, was a rogue and great friend of King Henry II of England.
Henry, needing more support and less interference from the churchmen of his day, decided on a master-stroke—to make his bosom buddy both Chancellor of England and head of the English Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Thomas demurred, warning the king against it, but, once given the role and responsibility of archbishop, he carried them out unreservedly, ultimate being first exiled and then martyred because of it.
Another fair-minded, logical, reasonable, courageous, dedicated, and dauntless Thomas!
The relationship of Thomas More (1478-1535) and King Henry VIII had some similarities. King Henry wanted a male heir, but was childless. He needed to divorce his wife and seek another, but, impeded by the church discipline and authorities, he broke with Rome, declaring himself supreme head of the English Church.
His intended master-stroke was to make his modest, respected, lawyer friend Thomas More the Chancellor of England, counting on Thomas’s full support for his decisions.
However Thomas More was fair-minded, logical, reasonable, courageous, dedicated, and dauntless. He couldn’t back his royal friend and was beheaded for it, for his integrity and overwhelming honesty.
Maybe you’re not a Thomas, but qualities like these could help make you a saint, too!


10 January 2021

Life Giving

It’s a curious arrangement: the day after Christians celebrate the birth of the Messiah, most commemorate the deacon Stephen, the first to die because of Jesus.
According to Acts of the Apostles, Stephen was filled with grace and power. Steeped in knowledge of the Jewish scriptures, he debated openly in Jerusalem with fellow Jews from various parts of the Roman Empire about the life, teachings, and identity of Jesus.
Some men made false charges of blasphemy about Stephen to the Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish religious authority.
After hearing his testimony and witness to Jesus, the Sanhedrin adjudged him guilty and condemned him to death.
At that time, way before electric chairs, guillotines, and firing squads, capital punishment took the form of stoning the person to death, and so he died.
We hail Stephen as the first “martyr” (Greek for “witness”) to die, to give his life, for Jesus. Although his life was taken, Stephen had first chosen to give it away in service to his Master and the truth.
In the early years after the death of Jesus, many of his followers died similar deaths, giving their lives rather than betray their Lord and the truth. It was the era of martyrdom.
Over the centuries countless people have chosen to give their lives for God, although without becoming martyrs in the sense of being executed for their faith.
More often the gift of one’s life takes the form of years of generous, loving service of others, of a slow, patient, and persevering giving of possessions, time, freedom, and other assets and resources in the name of Jesus and fidelity to his teachings and example.
It’s a paradox in a way: The life worth living is a sacrificial life, for it is a life of giving and forgiving. It is a life of love.

Giving one’s life to save another’s often takes the form of a shockingly dramatic act of heroism, of extraordinary generosity—and rightly so. But, the slow, gradual, persevering giving of one’s life to save another’s also is heroic but less acclaimed.
Loving one’s innocent, helpless baby daughter or son is almost “doing what comes naturally”, although it’s not necessarily a universal pattern of behavior.
Loving one’s spouse usually is the root or the fruit of a good marriage, even though the love may wax or wane.
Loving all one’s extended family is often challenging and, alas, not always successful. Sometimes the price, the cost is too high!
Loving one’s nearby neighbor is more a matter of respect, correctness, and friendship; only sometimes does it seem to be a kind of love.
Loving the distant neighbor, fellow-citizen (or immigrant), foreigner—here’s where the notion of “love” hardly seems applicable!
Loving everybody, giving of one’s life for everybody or for anybody—that’s a bit much. Often, we consider it more stupid, senseless, or naïve than heroic!
When Stephen was dying, he prayed for his stoners, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”
When Jesus was being nailed to the cross, he prayed for his executioners, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”
At the last supper, the Lord’s legacy to his followers was, “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
Don’t get tired giving life. It’s the only really good way to live!

(Available in
Spanish translation)

27 December 2020

Dando la Vida

Es una disposición curiosa: el día después de la celebración el nacimiento del Mesías, la mayoría de los cristianos conmemoran a Esteban, el primero en morir por Jesús.
Según Hechos de los Apóstoles, Esteban estaba lleno de gracia y poder. Conociendo bien las escrituras, debatió abiertamente en Jerusalén con otros judíos de varias partes del Imperio Romano sobre la vida, las enseñanzas y la identidad de Jesús.
Algunos hombres presentaron acusaciones falsas de blasfemia contra Esteban ante el Sanedrín, la autoridad religiosa judía.
Después de escucharle y su testimonio de Jesús, el Sanedrín lo declaró culpable y lo condenó a muerte.
En aquel tiempo, mucho antes de las sillas eléctricas, las guillotinas y los pelotones de fusilamiento, la pena capital consistía en lapidar a la persona y morir.
Esteban fue el primer “mártir” (en griego, “testigo”) que murió, que dio su vida por Jesús. Aunque le quitaron la vida, Stephen había elegido primero entregarla al servicio de su Maestro y de la verdad.
En los primeros años después de la muerte de Jesús, muchos de sus seguidores murieron muertes similares, dando sus vidas en lugar de traicionar a su Señor y la verdad. Fue la era del martirio.
A lo largo de los siglos, innumerables personas han optado por dar su vida por Dios, aunque sin convertirse en mártires en el sentido de ser ejecutados por su fe.
Más a menudo, el don de la vida toma la forma de años de servicio generoso y amoroso a los demás, de una entrega lenta, paciente y perseverante de posesiones, tiempo, libertad y otros bienes y recursos en el nombre de Jesús y fidelidad a su enseñanzas y ejemplo.
En cierto modo, es una paradoja: la vida que vale la pena vivir es una vida de sacrificio, porque es una vida de dar y perdonar. Es una vida de amor.

Dar su vida para salvar la de otro a menudo toma la forma de un acto dramático de heroísmo, de extraordinaria generosidad. Pero la entrega lenta, gradual y perseverante de la vida de uno para salvar la de otro también es heroica pero menos aclamada.
Amar a la hijita o al hijito inocente e indefenso de uno es casi “haciendo lo que es natural”, aunque no es necesariamente un patrón de comportamiento universal.
Amar al cónyuge suele ser la raíz o el fruto de un buen matrimonio, aunque el amor pueda aumentar o disminuir.
Amar a toda la familia extendida puede ser un desafío y, lamentablemente, no siempre tiene éxito. ¡A veces el costo es demasiado!
Amar al vecino cercano es más una cuestión de respeto, lo apropiado, y amistad; sólo a veces parece ser una especie de amor.
Amar al vecino lejano, conciudadano (o inmigrante), extranjero—¡aquí es donde la noción de “amor” apenas parece aplicable!
Amar a todos, dar la vida por todos o por cualquiera—eso es demasiado. ¡A menudo, lo consideramos más estúpido, insensato o ingenuo que heroico!
Cuando Esteban agonizaba, oró por sus apedreadores: “Señor, no les tomes en cuenta este pecado”.
Cuando Jesús estaba siendo clavado en la cruz, oró por sus verdugos: “Padre, perdónalos, porque no saben lo que hacen”.
En la última cena, el Señor dijo a sus seguidores: “Ahora les doy mi mandamiento: Ámense unos con otros, como yo los amo a ustedes. No hay amor más grande que éste: Dar la vida por sus amigos.”
No te canses de dar la vida. ¡Es la única manera realmente buena de vivir!

(Una traducción del inglés)

27 de diciembre de 2020