LIVING WITHOUT WELCOMING THE LIGHT
We all go about committing errors and mistakes throughout our life. We calculated things badly. We didn’t measure the consequences of our acts well. We let ourselves be swayed by passion or insensitivity. That’s how we are. However, those aren’t the worst mistakes. What’s worse is to arrange our life wrongly. Let’s give an example.
We all know that life is a gift. I’m not the one who decided to be born. I haven’t chosen myself. I haven’t chosen my parents or my people. It’s all been given to me. To be alive is already from the start to receive. The only way to live sensibly is to welcome responsibly what’s been given to us.
Yet we don’t always think this way. We believe that life is something owed to us. We feel that we’re in charge of ourselves. We think that the surest way to live is to organize it all around ourselves. I’m the only thing that matters. What difference does anyone else make?
Some don’t know how to live without demanding. They demand and demand on and on. They have the impression that they’ve never gotten a fair shake. They’re like insatiable children who’re never satisfied with what they have. They do nothing but beg, complain, feel sorry for themselves. Without realizing it they little by little become the center of everyone’s attention. They’re the source and the norm. Everything must submit to their ego. Everything should be orchestrated for their benefit.
The life of such a person then closes in on itself. They no longer welcome the gift of each day. Acknowledgement and gratitude disappear. It’s not possible to live with the heart expanded. They keep talking about love, but «to love» means to possess, to desire the other, to put them at my service.
This way of focusing life leads to living closed to God. The person is unable to welcome. They don’t believe in grace, they open themselves to nothing new, they hear no voice at all, they suspect no other presence in their life. The individual is what fills everything. That’s why the warning from John’s Gospel is so serious: «The Word was the true light that illumines every person. He came into the world and the world didn’t know him. He came to what was his own, but his own did not accept him». Our great sin is to live without welcoming the light.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
