TO LIVE WITHOUT WELCOMING THE LIGHT
We all go about making errors and mistakes throughout our life. We calculate things badly. We don’t measure the consequences of our actions very well. We let ourselves be driven by passion or insensitivity. That’s the way we are. However these aren’t the most serious errors. What’s worse is to have life wrongly formulated. Let’s give an example.
We all know that life is a gift. It’s not me who decided to be born. I myself haven’t chosen to be myself. I haven’t chosen my parents or my people. Everything has been given to me. To be alive is already right from the start to receive. The only way to live sensibly is to welcome responsibly what is given me.
However we don’t always think like this. We believe within ourselves that life is something owed to us. We feel ourselves owners of ourselves. We think that the more correct way to live is to organize everything around ourselves. I’m the only important thing. Why bother about everyone else?
Some don’t know how to live except by demanding. Demand and demand all the more. They have the impression that they never receive what they should. They’re like children that can’t be satisfied, who are never happy with what they have. They do nothing but beg, demand, complain. Without realizing it they become little by little the center of everything. They’re the source and the norm. Everything must be subordinate to their ego. Everything should remain set up for their advantage.
The life of the person then gets closed into themselves. They no longer welcome the gift of each day. Recognition and gratitude disappear. It’s not possible to live with the heart expanded. They keep talking about love, but «to love» now means to possess, desire the other, put them at my beck and call.
This way of focusing life leads to a life closed to God. The person becomes incapable of welcoming. They don’t believe in grace, they don’t open themselves to anything new, they hear no one’s voice, they don’t suspect another’s presence in their life. It’s the individual that fills everything. That’s why the warning in John’s Gospel is so serious: «The Word was the real light that gives light to everyone; he was coming into the world…and the world did not recognize him. He came to his own, and his own people did not accept him». Our greatest sin is to live without welcoming the light.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
