On the True Meaning of Gift
In the words of the Canadian philosopher, George Grant, “We are not our own.” And Grant acknowledges that such language “is not easy [to accept] for modern [thinkers].” Grant summed up our Christian Faith in the following words, “Christianity [is at its] center concerned with Grace. He says, “Grace simply means that the greatest things of our lives are given to us, not made by us and therefore not to be understood as random accidents.”
Grant says that “our making takes place within an ultimate givenness. However difficult it is for all of us to affirm that life is a gift, it is an assertion primal to Christianity. [And] through the tragedies, the outrages, the passions, the disciplines and madnesses of everyday life, to be a Christian is the attempt to learn the substance of this assertion.” Today, we will meditate more deeply on Divine grace: the gift of God, and how we respond to it.
The words of St. John are very applicable here, “God so loved the world that he gave us his only begotten Son…” Moreso, the words of St. Paul, “He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?” In this particular text of St. Luke’s gospel, St. Luke, the Physician, the Master of Mathematics, compares God’s gift with the lepers’ sense of gratitude for the gift they received. He ranked their level of gratitude on the scale of 1 to 10, and it is at its lowest level. Only one of them came back!
St. Luke tells us that “As they were leaving, [God’s presence], they were made clean. Then, one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with aloud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. [he was a Samaritan], a foreigner. Have we noticed the gift of grace in our lives, freely given to us? Do we realize that even our very lives are gifts from God? Have we come back to thank God for this amazing gift of life? Or we have turned on ourselves and destroyed the gift of life? How do we treat our own bodies? How do we treat the gift of nature? Do we conduct our lives in a way that shows gratitude to God for the gift of life and the many blessings we continue to receive?
When the lepers first came to Jesus, St. Luke tells us that “they kept their distance.” By keeping their distance, they demonstrated their unworthiness to receive the gift of life from God. A good and beautiful start, a commendable gesture, a very highly encouraged starting point when approaching holiness, and a powerful reminder to all of us that when approaching a great mystery of God, we do so with a profound respect, reverence, and humility. Have you noticed that we are getting somehow too familiar with Sacredness? Well, that blinds our sense of reverence towards God. When we are too familiar with God, we are less careful about our words and actions. And this translates to our lives, if we lose our sense of respect and value, we are less careful about preserving our dignity and purpose. We tend to be careless about self-presentation, and the example we set for others around us.
Are we grateful to God for the gift of his Son, and of our very lives? Or we are like the other nine lepers who showed no sign of gratitude at all!
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