LIFE AS GIFT
Just about everything today invites us to live under the sign of activity, programming and performance. Few are the differences in this between capitalism and socialism. When it comes time to value the person, it always ends up measuring it for the capacity of production.
You could say that modern society has arrived at the practical conviction that, to give life its true meaning and its fullest content, the only important thing is to get out of it the greatest production by means of effort and activity.
That’s why we find so strange and embarrassing that small parable, recounted by the Gospel writer Mark, in which Jesus compares «God’s reign» with a seed that grows of itself, without the farmer offering power to germinate and grow. Undoubtedly the work of sowing that the farmer realizes is important, but in the seed there’s something that he hasn’t put there: a vital power that owes nothing to his effort.
To experience life as gift is probably one of the things that can make us give life to today’s men and women in a new way, more attentive not just to what we get with our own work, but also what we are going to receive gratuitously.
Although we may not perceive it thus, our greatest «misfortune» is to live just by our own effort, without letting ourselves be graced and blessed by God, and without enjoying what we are constantly being given. To pass through life without allowing ourselves to be surprised by the «novelty» of each day.
We all need today to learn to live more openly and welcoming, with a more contemplative and grateful attitude. Someone has said that there are problems that aren’t «resolved» based on effort, but that «dissolve» when we know how to welcome God’s grace into us. We forget that, as Georges Bernanos said, definitively «all is grace», because everything, absolutely everything, is sustained and penetrated by the mystery of that God who is grace, forgiveness, and welcome for all God’s creatures. This is what Jesus reveals to us.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
