No matter what life has handed us, in the way of afflictions and tragedies, the best gift life has handed to us, on a silver platter, is the gift of our own life.
No matter what our parents have done to us, even if they've abused us terribly, they still chose to give us the gift of life. And it's ours to create, it's our task to recuperate and heal from whatever tries to cripple us so that we can live with an openness to all that life offers us.
Our bodies are such gifts. Hands, feet, eyes, ears, arms, legs, - even if some of them don't work exactly right, there is always one special sense left to us to appreciate the awe-inspiring world around us. Internationally acclaimed speaker, author and activist Helen Keller was both blind and deaf. She approached the world with her sense of touch, - and especially with her love for her many friends. She commented "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart."
Our minds are such gifts. We may not be academically gifted, or talented in any particular way that we can discern, but God has given us a unique place in this world, and a unique group of people whom we influence and who influence us.
St. Jean Baptiste Vianney, the Cure d'Ars, did not seem to have any special talents. He was a Frenchman, the son of a farmer, who worked as a shepherd and didn't receive any formal education until he was twenty years old. He decided that God wanted him to be a priest, yet he had difficulty learning Latin and keeping up with his other studies, since his schooling had been interrupted by the French Revolution. He wasn't ordained until he was thirty. Because he didn't seem to have any special gifts, he was assigned to a small, remote village named Ars, where he spent his entire priesthood. Yet prayer expanded and sharpened his mental gifts. His simple holiness was so well known that he heard confessions for over twelve hours a day, and Bishops and aristocrats came to him for the wisdom of his spiritual direction. Vianney, known as the Cure d'Ars, gives us this simple yet wise advice:
"The heart is drawn towards what it loves the most. The heart of a good Christian turns towards heaven, where God is, Who is our treasure."
Our souls are such gifts. When we recognize what a gift our life is, we are filled with gratitude to the God Who created our souls in God's Image and Likeness. God - Who had us in mind for all eternity. And so God is our treasure - the One we came from and the One we return to.Our lives are so short in the history of the universe that true wisdom is remembering where we came from and where we are going: from the hands of God and into the hands of God. For we weren't given the gift of life for a few short years; we were given the gift of life for eternity.
I am closer to eternity than I was a year ago, or even thirty years ago. When you're a young wife and mother, life stretches ahead of you like a shining road that never ends. Life quickly teaches us that life ends much sooner than we think, that the gift of life needs to be savored and drunk like the most precious wine. And we must live it with full attention to all it can offer us - and all we can offer to others.
St. Therese of Lisieux knew well the shortness of life. She died at the age of thirty-three, after a long, painful struggle with tuberculosis. Knowing that her life would be brief made her focus on the most important aspects of life - and to decide to live every moment readying herself for eternity spent with her greatest treasure: God. She said "The world's thy ship and not thy home."
She lived a cloistered life as a Carmelite, and served her God by loving the small community of nuns whom she lived with. She found God's Face in them, even the most crochety! She knew that the quality of her life depended on how deeply she loved: "Without love, deeds, even the most brilliant, count for nothing." And she also knew that if one loved, one could not count the cost: "When one loves, one does not calculate."
Today is a day to prayerfully ponder all that I am grateful for. I am so grateful for the gift of my life: grateful to God and to my parents; grateful to my sisters, grandparents, cousins, and the rest of my relatives; grateful to my husband, children, and grandchildren; grateful to the many school and church communities I've been a part of, and our Diaconate community. The love and support of the people in my life have made my life's journey the rich tapestry that it is. I am grateful for my body, my mind, my heart, and my soul, grateful to be able to sing and to write, and especially to be able to forgive and to be forgiven. Life is too short to allow myself to be crippled by sinful pride or by corrosive anger and bitterness.
Be grateful for your life as a gift from God. Recognize the beauty that lies within you, and within each day, just waiting to be discovered. And look for the beauty in all the people around you, just waiting to be discovered. Appreciate each birthday as a gift from God, an opportunity to love and be loved more deeply, and another step towards eternity with God, your greatest Treasure. Remember, above all: "The world's thy ship and not thy home."