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He Gave His Only Son

"Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed."

John 21:29

• There should be less talk. A preaching point is not a meeting point.


• The dying, the cripple, the mental, the unwanted, the unloved-- they are Jesus in disguise.


• In the West there is loneliness, which I call the leprosy of the West. In many ways it is worse than our poor in Calcutta. (Commonweal, Dec 19, 1997)


• It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing. It is not how much we give, but how much love we put in the giving.


• The poor give us much more than we give them. They're such strong people, living day to day with no food. and they never curse, never complain. We don't have to give them pity or sympathy. We have so much to learn from them.


• I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?


• I do not pray for success. I ask for faithfulness.


• Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.


• If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

~Mother Teresa~

Thirty years ago, I was nearly killed. It was the day before my eighteenth birthday and I was on my way to take to my friends their invitations to my birthday celebration the next day. I was not harmed but I thought that everything that happened, from the moment when the assailant was about to stab me, my escape by the grace of God, my futile knocking on apartments asking for help until I was given refuge by an old woman who was alone in her apartment, the assailant trying to break into the apartment until the police had no choice but to shoot him. I thought that all happened in ten minutes or so, an agonizing lifetime in slow motion that I can still recall every moment of it today. But to those who witnessed it, they told me that everything happened in not more than ten seconds. Later on I learned that the assailant had attacked three other people minutes before he ran into the exact spot where I was. Of the three, he injured one, but fatally hurt the other two. We were all caught in the crossroad of a life changing moment that redefined completely what "future" meant for me. In that moment, my birthday the next day, what I anticipated or assumed that would happen the next day, my plans to enroll in college and what I had planned to do that summer, all vanished within ten seconds. I completely understood what I learned that day, from James 4:

"Come now, you who say, 'today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit' yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, 'if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.'' As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin."

In a powerful way, I suddenly realized that "future" was just an illusion. That day liberated me, and from that day on, every day has become "carpe diem!" Latin for "Seize the day!" Every day becomes my only one, my last one, a precious collection of 24 hours that I should spend wisely, lovingly. It became easier for me to hold my temper, because I had no tomorrow to use to apologize or make amends. It became easier for me to fulfill promises or to complete chores, because I had no tomorrow to fall back on. It became easier for me to express my appreciation for my loved ones, to grab the earliest opportunity to show my love, because I might not have tomorrow to say it. In choosing between two things I became wiser, and it was easier to see which one led to God's way, which one I had to do. I became very careful not to do anything to hurt God, and I became very afraid of sinning. In many ways, each day that ended for me became a day of victory, of achieving victory over myself and my weaknesses. Because I saw the evening as the end of my day, I could close it properly and thank God for that day. And if I would wake up the next day, it was easier for me to be grateful to Him for the additional 24 hours. Because I could no longer find security in the possibility of a tomorrow, I neither became presumptuous, nor hopeless. When there was heartache or an overwhelming trial, my 24 hours gave me the stillness of heart and the refuge in the faith that only God knew if I had the next day to continue my despair, or if He had other plans for me. As my dependence on tomorrow and my own understanding lessen, my dependence and trust on God's infinite, often unseen and unfathomable plans become easier to accept, because they are now less scary.

In the chaos of this changing, volatile world, the crash of the economy, for example, or the unexpected string of winter storms, God's mysterious Hand was easily be seen. In many ways, we can see it as His way of reminding us which is the most important thing this Christmas season, the silence and holiness of Christ's birth that cannot be found in the mad and noisy rush of the traditional things that we usually do during Christmas. In His mighty and loving way, He literally made us pause and stop still, and jolted us back to the right path. Now it is up to us to continue in it. By "shortening" our vision, we learn how to "see" things the divine way. As we continue to learn how to see time this way and how to let God "handle" our day, God in His grace will put our hearts at peace, and enable us to find joy even in the midst of trials.

If we plan to have resolutions to keep for this New Year then, heed James 4 - seize each day eagerly, spend each hour wisely, and rejoice in being able to keep our resolutions for today. Before we go to bed, we should thank God always and count our blessings, and keep in mind the things that we have failed to do. If in His mercy He grants us yet another day, we proceed to make amends and try to keep our resolutions once again, aspiring to become better than the day before. It has been thirty years since my tomorrow stopped and all days that I have lived are "todays". In His great and mighty ways God shakes us once in a while to remind us not to be complacent about today, urging us always a carpe diem!, seize the day! And He does that not to scare us, but to urge us to keep our eyes on heaven and on an eternal life with Him in forever joy.

URLVD

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