Third Reflection

To recapitulate for those of you who were not here Thursday and Friday, in our first reflection we considered the meaning and concept of gift and we saw that every gift is a favor, that every gift and favor is unmerited, that gifts and favors proceed from the love and esteem of the giver for the recipient, and that therefore every gift and favor involved at least two persons. We also saw that God is the ultimate source of all gifts and favors, and that the only appropriate way to respond to a gift or favor is by some act of gratitude.

In the reflection of yesterday evening we spoke of what it is that every gift says to the recipient, or better, what the giver of the gift intends to say to the recipient by means of the gift. We said that a gift itself very often is an expression of gratitude to the giver, and says, basically, “thank you for being you”. We went on to say that because no one is the origin and cause of their own being and existence, implicitly the giver is saying thanks to God for the being and the existence of the one of whom the gift is given. We then said that in a sense we are co-authors of what we become in the process of reaching adulthood and beyond, but that we can take credit and be thanked only for saying “yes” to God and to others for their help in becoming or realizing all the possibilities for good that we started out with. Hence again, when by a gift we say to the recipient “Thank you for being you”, we are implicitly saying “thanks” again to God for helping the recipient say yes to His offered help, and also to parents and others who have offered help to enable the recipient to become the good person he or she is.

This evening we’ll mention briefly one more meaning a gift can have, and then go on to consider some of the reasons why we can consider all other people as God’s gift to us, and some of the categories of people that are very special gifts to us from God.

Gifts, as a corollary to saying to another: “thank you for enriching my life”, also represent and signify a kind of surrender of the giver of the gift to the recipient. A kind of surrender in the sense that the giver is saying: this one gift means that anything I have that you need is yours. It means that “I am for you”. It implies “you can rely on me and my good will toward you!” It seems to say: “I want you as an enduring special person in my life, and I hope you want the same of me”. Gifts then, are a way of cementing “bonds” that unite the giver of the gift and the recipient of the gift.

(As a corollary, we can see why the married state is an indissoluble union of the spouses. If ordinary gifts tend to cement bonds joining giver and receiver of gifts, imagine the strength of the bond joining the man and woman who make a total gift of their humanity and their future, consequently, to one another, mutually? This alone suffices to make the bond of marriage unbreakable).

In all that we have said in the first two reflections, we have been mentioning others who relate to us as our friends, and therefore all that has been said about others being God’s gift to us apply really only to the good people we know or rather, only to the good people who have actually enriched our lives and have helped us to find joy in our relationships with them and helping us experience that life is well worth living. These are the people who affirm us and help us achieve a sense of our own self worth and dignity. These are the persons with whom we usually give gifts to at their birth date and at Christmas, and after having experienced their benevolence in a special way. But there is one category of people who hopefully are our friends, but who are related to us in a way that makes of them very special and helpful gifts of God in our lives. That category of “other persons” is comprised of our lawful superiors. By lawful superiors, of course, we mean all those persons who have authority over us as members of a distinct social unit or entity, the person entrusted with the task of “authoring”, so to speak, peace and harmony and the well being of all the members of that distinct social unit. Thus, by lawful superiors we mean those people who really and truly represent God in our lives. As representing God in our lives, therefore, lawful superiors are the gifts God gives us that enable us to attain the union of our wills with God’s will. The will of the superior, when he or she acts within the scope of his or her lawful authority really is God’s will for us so that, when we conform to that will, we know we are doing God’s will.

Seeing the value of our lawful superiors

It is impossible to over estimate the value of a lawful superior in our lives, once we have seen the extraordinary benefit of having a person in our lives who clearly and without doubt reveals to us what God’s will is for us. But of course we can only truly value our lawful superior as an altogether special gift of God when we realize what it means to be conformed to the will of God. That realization comes with knowing the relationship between “love” and our wills, between love and every free choice that we make.

Although we generally associate love with our hearts, as the seat or origin of our affections and therefore the “faculty” by means of which we love, it is really the will, which is our faculty of loving. The proper object of the will, as you know, is good, (as an aside, the proper object of our intellect is truth, and the proper object of the imagination is Beauty. Thus God alone can make us happy – fulfill us in our being – God alone can make us happy – fulfill us in our being - God alone is the goal and object of our existence and being, because He is Supreme Infinite Goodness, Supreme Infinite Truth, and Supreme infinite beauty).

God – in His own Image and Likeness – has structured our humanity in such a way that we cannot help but choose what we perceive to be Good. It is metaphysically impossible for us to choose what we perceive as evil. Unfortunately, due to our fallen human nature and to the deceitful suggestions of the Evil One, it is possible to perceive what is authentically Good as evil, and what is authentically Evil as good.

But in any event, the will unites itself and becomes one with the good it perceives by the exercise of free choice. Thus the exercise of free choice or free will is actually and truly an act of love. An act of love causes oneness with the beloved in some way. Thus, since we always know for sure when we are choosing, when we will to conduct ourselves in a certain way, we therefore have a way of knowing for sure that we are loving.

It is difficult for us to know that we really are doing the loving thing in our relationships here on earth with our fellow human beings. That is because love is a spiritual reality, since God, who is love, is a pure spirit, and we cannot perceive spirits directly by means of our faculties of perception. Thus, it is next to impossible to perceive directly our Love for God.

And this is exactly where doing the Will of God fits in. An act of our will, which conforms it to His Will, which chooses what He wills for us, is unmistakably an act of love for Him. It is an act, which unmistakably unites us to Himself in Love. Doing God’s will is the only perceptible and certain way of achieving union with God. Well then, now we can see what an extraordinary great gift to us is our lawful superior. God gives us our lawful superior to take away all doubt, all anxiety over whether we are united to Him in Love. We know, we can know, without a doubt when we are doing our superior’s will, when we obey him or her. What this means is that if we don’t have a lawful superior, then we had better look around and find one. Or better, we all have one, but we may not have been able to identify who in our life is our lawful superior. It is easy for those who take religious vows to identify their lawful superiors. It is easy for married people because the lawful superior in spiritual matters is the spouse. It is easy for a priest; his lawful superiors are the Bishop immediately, and the Pope, ultimately. In religious matters it is easy for us Catholics: it is the pastor first, then the Bishop and ultimately the Pope. In civil matters, for all of us, are the lawful civil superiors or authorities. In some things, really important things, they too represent God in our lives.

Yes, what can be a greater gift from God than the certainty that we love Him and are united to Him in love? I don’t think there is a greater gift. Therefore, let us see our lawful superiors as the best gift that He can give us.

Does this present a problem? Is not Jesus, Our Emmanuel, God’s greatest gift to us? Yes, we know, of course, that He is, and perhaps the way we can see that He is a greater gift than the lawful superior is by remembering that it was He who showed us, and proved beyond a doubt that the only way to be united to God the Father in Love is to do His, the Father’s will, even at the cost of one’s own life.

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