Showing posts with label Gift. Show all posts

Saturday, May 30, 2015

The Daily Gift

Time for the Family 5/30/2015 , , , , , , No comments :
My proposal to my fiancée did not go how I planned it. I'm sure plenty of guys can say the same in today's day and age where proposals are often choreographed with more extras than a Cecil B. DeMille epic. There is pressure to infuse as much meaning as possible into the moment. In my case, I proposed, as planned, in front of the Blessed Sacrament on St. John Paul II’s first feast day. Instead of being private, however, it ended up being in front of fifteen other random strangers in the chapel – my fiancée's personal nightmare.  

As our engagement proceeded, I was surprised by the feeling of normality. I had those periodic “Woah, I'm getting married” moments, but in general, the monumental life change I was preparing for seemed very much matter-of-fact. “Of course I'm marrying Maureen, it would be weird to think otherwise.” Now for someone who never ceases to seek the profound in anything less than the weather, I was alarmed at what I was feeling about my own betrothal. This should be a time of being overwhelmed at the depth of what I was entering into with this woman I loved and instead I felt very matter-of-fact about it all. Something had to be wrong with me, my maturity, the engagement, something.

As I reflected and prayed about all of this, two things occurred to me. It was entirely appropriate for me to feel this way, but it also signaled that I needed to grow. I thought of two concepts that St. John Paul II wrote in his Theology of the Body. The first was the sacramentality of the body and the second was the body as a task.

Author's picture.
A sacrament, as we all remember from our second grade religious education classes, is “an outward sign, instituted by Christ to give us grace.” Sacraments are those visible things that not only point to invisible things, but also really make those invisible realities present or efficacious. For example, when someone is baptized, the symbol in the rite is one of being washed. Yet, the physical pouring of or immersion into the water, is not merely a sign of what God is doing, the physical action actually brings about the spiritual action. Sacraments efficaciously make present the very things they signify.

John Paul takes this truth and then applies it to the body. Man and Woman are made in God's Image and Likeness. God, who is a Trinity of Persons, exists as a constant and complete gift of self. Being made in his Image as male and female, this gift-reality is written precisely into our bodies in our relation to one another. 

Man, in fact, by means of his corporality, his masculinity and femininity, becomes a visible sign of the economy of truth and love, which has its source in God himself and which was revealed already in the mystery of creation. Against this vast background we understand fully the words that constitute the sacrament of marriage, present in Genesis 2:24: "A man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh." (19, 5)

So, in a certain sense, there is a sort of “naturalness” to the idea of getting married. There is a certain matter-of-factness that one should expect with this because God created us to be a gift to this other. It is in our very nature to be gift, just as it is in our nature to eat, sleep, exercise, etc. So, there should be a certain “of course” quality to my betrothal.

And yet, we know almost by instinct, that there is something wrong with staying simply in the realm of the “of course.” We know that marriage is on a higher plane, even if marrying her seems as natural as breathing to me. It is, but we also need our growth from the sacrament of marriage itself to come close to grasping marriage's reality. John Paul simultaneously affirms that man already has written into him this reality of gift, and that the body is also a task for men and women. Yes, my body, as it was the moment I was born, was given to me as a sign of my interior reality to be a gift to another, however, my body is also an assignment. I must grow into the reality that I am:

The Creator has assigned as a task to man his body, his masculinity and femininity; and that in masculinity and femininity he, in a way, assigned to him as a task his humanity, the dignity of the person, and also the clear sign of the interpersonal communion in which man fulfills himself through the authentic gift of himself. Setting before man the requirements conforming to the tasks entrusted to him, at the same time the Creator points out to man, male and female, the ways that lead to assuming and discharging them. (59, 2)

My task is to, in a sense, become who I am. I'm not there yet. There is a depth written into my creation as a man to more fully become a gift and to more fully enter into this communion of persons with my beloved who also has a depth written into her creation and must more fully become a gift to me. The body reveals to me that this is who I am, but it also educates and leads me to a fuller depth of this mystery. A maturation needs to take place:

In its masculinity or femininity the body is given as a task to the human spirit. By means of an adequate maturity of the spirit it too becomes a sign of the person, which the person is conscious of, and authentic "matter" in the communion of persons. In other words, through his spiritual maturity, man discovers the nuptial meaning proper to the body. (59, 4 emphasis mine)

And so, while it is the most natural of things for me to enter into marriage with my fiancée, the reality of what we are doing goes to the very heart of what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God. By entering into this matrimonial covenant, we continue this “pedagogy of the body” by the revelation of the communion of persons not only to ourselves but to the rest of the world. Our wedding and our married life together is a sacrament of this reality of who and what we are created to be, but also stands as our task to more fully become that reality.


My plans to infuse meaning into my proposal to Maureen didn't work and my time of betrothal has been less a matter of being overwhelmed by the gravity of it all and more an ordinary day to day affair. From what I know of family life, that's probably an experience most of us have. We go to work, make the meals, do laundry, mow the lawn, but written into each of these very normal mundane affairs is this reality that while doing them, we are being drawn to consider this life as a gift. That married life, in the normal day to day, is a task given to us to live out more completely the reality that in these moments of picking the kids up from school and untangling the Christmas lights I am living for another  - and I'm receiving from another. And just like my proposal, the truth of this reality is already there, it doesn't need a grand scheme to infuse it with meaning. This gift-quality of life isn't just part of life, it is life. I am nothing else but gift, and only in pursuing this as task, can I truly become who I am.   


Sunday, May 10, 2015

Learning Motherhood From Mary

Time for the Family 5/10/2015 , , , , , No comments :
It probably shouldn’t be so shocking to me that our toddler daughter is interested in books.  After all, nearly every wall in our small apartment is lined with bookshelves.  We have daily read-aloud sessions, and if she hears a line or two from a particular book that I recite from memory, she trots across the room looking to retrieve it.

One such line that has come to mind as we begin the month of May, dedicated to mothers, and in a particular way to the Blessed Mother, is from a little board book about saints.  “Mary teaches us about loving mothers,” the book declares, with a picture of Mary being crowned by a smiling angel.  

The words aren’t just for children.  This month is a fitting time to reflect on what the Blessed Mother can teach all mothers about how to love the children entrusted to us.

At first glance it can seem overwhelming to look to Mary – a woman without sin – to grow in our own mothering.  We look around at piles of dirty dishes, smell another diaper in need of changing, take a glance at the quickly filling calendar and figure that the Blessed Mother – a perfect woman raising a perfect Son – has so little in common with our 21st century American lifestyle that we’re better off looking elsewhere for guidance.

But as we reflect on the mysteries of the Rosary, there are many life lessons we can learn from Mary.  We see, too, that her life was not a blissful ride on easy street.  Sure, there are no mysteries centered on smelly diapers or work-life balance, but the graces present in Mary’s life can help us to embrace the struggles and joys of our own family life.  Let’s take a look at a couple of lessons of motherhood we glimpse in the fifth sorrowful mystery, Jesus Dies on the Cross.  

It’s tempting to think that Mary knew exactly what would happen at every moment of her and her Son’s life.  We sometimes have an image of Mary giving her “yes” to Gabriel at the annunciation, knowing exactly what that “yes” would mean.  In reality, the archangel did not hand Mary a 33-year calendar to inform her of the everyday “yesses” her fiat to becoming the Mother of God entailed.  St. John Paul II, for example, wrote that Mary’s yes to God at the foot of the cross was perhaps the “deepest kenosis (self-emptying) of faith.”  Standing at the foot of the cross, she did not know how God would be victorious through the death of her Son, but she knew and trusted that good would come from evil.  
Pieta, Michelangelo - artwork in the public domain

There are many crosses in motherhood – miscarriages, children who are sick or bullied or ostracized, teenage or adult children who leave the faith, and so many more.  Yet, with Mary, every mother is called to have faith that God’s love will pour forth even amidst the most painful situations.  There is no resurrection without the cross, and Mary reminds us to trust God’s plan.

There is another poignant lesson for mothers from the crucifixion subtly portrayed in Michelangelo’s “Pieta.”  Most viewers of the statue focus on Mary’s arms embracing her Son, but a closer look also reveals her left hand open in an act of surrender.  Mary reveals the art – and perhaps the biggest challenge – of motherhood: to embrace and to be detached.  

On the one hand, a mother is called to love, cherish and care for the child(ren) entrusted to her.  At the same time, these children are not ultimately hers, nor her husband’s.  Ultimately, each child is a gift from God.  Mothers must care without being possessive. Mothers can look to Mary as an example and as an intercessor in striking this delicate balance.

In his encyclical, Redemptoris Mater, St. John Paul II summarized the way in which the Blessed Mother reveals the call of all women: 

It can be said that women, by looking to Mary, find in her the secret of living their femininity with dignity and of achieving their own true advancement.  In the light of Mary, the Church sees in the face of women the reflection of a beauty which mirrors the loftiest sentiments of which the human heart is capable: the self-offering totality of love; the strength that is capable of bearing the greatest sorrows; limitless fidelity and tireless devotion to work; the ability to combine penetrating intuition with words of support and encouragement (#46).

At first glance it might seem that only women with biological or adoptive children have something to learn from the motherhood of Mary, but St. John Paul II would challenge us to think differently.  All women, by virtue of their femininity, are called to be mothers.  All women are called to be spiritual mothers whether or not any children call them, “Mom.”  

The human person is entrusted to women in a unique way.  It’s not that men do not love or care for people, but rather that women are able, in a particular way, to notice the needs of others and to meet them, offering empathy, a listening ear and the unique care that a particular person needs.  Men and women both love, but they love differently.  Women love as mothers.  


Whether joyful, sorrowful, luminous or glorious, the mysteries of the rosary offer us a glimpse into how Mary loved and lived as a mother, becoming both guide and intercessor for us as we seek to more fully love as a spiritual or physical mother.


Monday, February 23, 2015

Is the World a Jungle or a Home?

Time for the Family 2/23/2015 , , , , , 1 comment :
Roughly a year ago a wise religious sister shared with me a profound truth, “either one receives the world, and life itself, as a gift and therefore perceives one’s surroundings as a hospitable home or the world is simply experienced as a harsh jungle threatening one’s life constantly.”
 
Her words came back to me recently as I was watching my toddler son explore our kitchen. In the span of 45 seconds, he bonked his head twice and was sent reeling backward onto his posterior. Clearly our kitchen was a jungle for him. Then, before bedtime, that same son bent over to pick up a toy only to unexpectedly hit the corner of the bed with his head causing him to fall backward and land on the carpet. The bedroom proved itself to be no less than the Amazon.

So how do I communicate to my children that ‘there is more than meets the eye’ when it comes to their experience of the school of hard knocks? I think it has to do with an exchange I just had with my older, three-year-old son.

This photo by the Montgomery County Planning
Commission is licensed under C.C. by 2.0.
Unbeknownst to him, Grandma had mailed him a picture book about hook and ladder fire engines. So I told him Grandma had sent him a surprise and that he should close his eyes and hold out his hands to receive it. After two or three more repeat instructions he trusted and did it. When he opened his eyes, he discovered the fantastic gift and was thrilled with it.  He was genuinely delighted with the book and kept asking me, “What is a surprise?” I found his question endearing, and this experience of surprise was an irreplaceable moment for him. In his innocence, surprise is 
now synonymous with a good thing given by a loved one who knows one’s preferences. 

The next morning, as we were walking down the stairs, he looked out the window and saw a slight dusting of snow and immediately exclaimed, “it snowed! Thank you Jesus!” Clearly for him this experience demonstrated that the “world is a home.”

Perhaps this is the punch line of Christian parenting? I must form my children to know through personal experience, not just lecture or conceptually, that life is full of goodness, providence and being intimately known. Inevitably, when their innocence is worn down and the struggles of life (see Genesis 3; i.e. labor pains, thorns, thistles and sweat) have mounded up, they can then enter the philosophical fray and concur that creation is very good and given to humanity to till and keep; all in anticipation of the Master’s return when He will invite His faithful servants to reside with Him in His Father’s house.             

I’m truly beginning to discover that being “like a child” (Mt 18:3) as an adult necessitates me being physically, emotionally and spiritually present to the children in my life (primarily my sons) so that when they oscillate between “jungle” and “home” experiences of the world, I relearn the lesson too and revisit my ultimate conclusion about life. Namely, that the world is an awe-inspiring gift, and if I have the eyes, ears and heart to receive it, I will become like a child trusting his father that the next thing placed in his hands will be an unexpected delight.


Life isn't a perpetual pop quiz that we dread because we have never understood the material. Life is a surprise mailing of a hook and ladder fire engine book that you love so much that you take it with you to nap time so that it fills your dreams.     


Wednesday, February 11, 2015

What is sexual difference, Part I

Time for the Family 2/11/2015 , , , , , , No comments :
Two years ago when the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for a pair of cases regarding the redefinition of marriage, I attended a March for Marriage held in Washington, DC.  Although many people were energized by standing with thousands of supporters of marriage (“marriage without adjectives,” as Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse likes to say), I left the rally rather discouraged.

People representing both sides of the debate were present.  People on both sides represented their beliefs through chants and slogans written on cardboard.  In a culture accustomed to expressing profound and mundane thoughts in 140 characters, perhaps this seemed normal to most people.

I felt trapped in front of the Supreme Court building, physically because of the chaos, but even more so, trapped by misunderstood vocabulary and the limitations of sound bites and slogans.  The truth of marriage cannot be expressed in the confines we have been handed.  The truth is a delicate set of paradoxes. 

Chief among the words that must be defined before a true conversation related to so many hot-button issues today can take place is that of sexual difference.  “Gender” is viewed as something fluid that we define for ourselves.  Commonly, sex is considered whatever reproductive organs I happen to have, and gender is viewed either as a social construct related to those reproductive organs or as the sex that I feel like or that to which I align myself.

By St. Petersburg College Library [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Is there an inherent meaning in gender or sexual difference?  Does it matter how we define it, how we understand it, how we talk about it?  Could an adequate view of sexual difference be key to assisting us on our quest to discover the meaning of being human?

To define sexual difference, we must plunge deeply into our origin as human persons.  This is a question that cannot be answered superficially.  Rather, we must go to the heart of who we are in order to discover why we are created male and female.   Consequently, to answer the question, “What is gender or sexual difference?” we really have to start with the question, “Who is God?”  A comprehensive answer is impossible in about 1000 words, but what follows is a brief summary.

Jesus’ disciple John tells us that God is love.  Yes, God loves, but even more so God is Love.  Love is who He is.  Love requires three – the lover, the beloved and the love which they share.  Love, however, is not three separate actions.  The giving and receiving in love are united as one. 

One person cannot be love because love requires three.  The three Persons of the Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – are Love in their unity and giving and receiving.  The Father pours Himself out as a gift to the Son.  The Son receives the Father and in return gives Himself to the Father.  Their love is so powerful that it is a third Person – the Holy Spirit. 

God is so generous within Himself that in this superabundance of love, He created the world.  Adam and Eve, as all of us, were created to receive everything as a gift – their own lives, each other, the world around them, their relationship with God.  There was no reason to grasp or to take.  All that they needed had already been given.  But in that moment of encounter with the serpent, Eve decided to not trust the goodness and love of God.  By grasping at the gift rather than receiving it, our original parents testified to their doubt that God would really provide for all that they needed and desired.  Rather than trust the Fatherhood of God, Adam and Eve took matters into their own hands.  Rather than value the gift of being creatures, they sought to become the creator of their own destiny and identity. 

Thousands of years later, we are making the same mistake today.  Instead of receiving our lives, our identity, our femininity/masculinity as a gift from God, we have attempted to take and to fashion ourselves.  But in order to be a man or a woman, in order to be a person, we first must receive.

A large portion of feminist sentiments over the years have been driven by a perceived negativity of receptivity.  Aristotle, for example, identified woman with passivity (matter) and man with activity (form).  Act was considered perfection, leaving women to be perceived as a sort of deformed male – completely passive.  This was the reining philosophical interpretation of gender for centuries.  However, as time went on and receptivity became associated with weakness, ignorance and inferiority, women desired to shed the title.  If receptivity really is about weakness, ignorance and inferiority, then women would be justified in their desire to find a different role.  But somewhere in our history, we were invited to change our perception of receptivity as not purely passive, and therefore, not inferior.
           
In the Incarnation, being both fully God and fully man, Christ revealed God to us.  The great mystery of the Trinity entered our radar because of Jesus Christ.  He spoke throughout the Gospels about his oneness with the Father and His call to send the Holy Spirit.  The three Persons of the Trinity are each fully God, and yet they are not cookie-cutter images.  They are unique Persons, all one God.  Consequently, there is an order within the Trinity. 

Since God is a Communion of Persons in love, and love requires both giving and receiving, there is an order of these two actions in God as well.  In Philippians 2, we see that Christ is the one who receives from the Father.  Love is initiated by the Father, without Him being greater than the Son or the Holy Spirit.  If all three are “equally” God, and yet there is a giving and receiving within the Trinity, then receptivity in God cannot be less than giving. 
           
Before the revelation of Jesus Christ, no one could conceive of receptivity as being a good in the same way as giving.  If giving is equated with power, then only the giver could have the “goodness” of being in control.  St. Thomas Aquinas saw the receptivity of Christ, and knowing that Jesus is not less than the Father, drew the conclusion that Christ’s receptivity had to be equal to the Father’s giving.  For many years, these conclusions about the equality of receptivity stayed in the realm of Trinitarian theology.  In the 20th century, the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, meditated upon the “perfection” of receptivity in creatures as well. 
           
It’s important to note that in terms of Creator-to-creature, both men and women receive.  Each human person receives his life as a gift from God.  Each of us receives the opportunity to respond to the love of God that has existed eternally. 

When we discover that receptivity is not a disadvantage and that all of creation is on the receiving end of the gift, we begin to realize that women hold a privileged position of representing the good of receptivity to the world.  Giving and receiving are not about power, but about service and love.
           
At the same time, not only do men both give and receive, but women do as well.  We are not two halves that make a whole, nor are we a positive and a negative number that balance each other in the end.  Yet, just as there is an order within the Trinity that does not cancel the equality of each Person being fully God, similarly there is an order within our human interactions that allows us to give and receive love in image of the One who created us. 

Back to our question, “Who is God?”  There are three major points to emphasize as we seek a definition of sexual difference. 

·      1) He is relational.  The three persons of the Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – are always in relation.  In fact, without their relationship, they would not be the Trinity – three Persons, One God.  Their relationship is more than just a friendship:  God is love.  Within God Himself, there is the Lover, the Beloved, and the Love that they share.

·      2) He has unity and difference.  God is three Persons who are “as great as” the others and are completely united.  At the same time, however, the three Persons are different.  They are able to share in eternal love because they are both different and perfectly united.

·      3) Within the Trinity, there is both giving and receiving.  If there was only giving, God couldn’t be love.  If there was only receiving, God couldn’t be love.  It is only because both giving and receiving are present in perfect abundance in God, that God is love.  We might think of receiving as something that weak people do, but God invites us to see otherwise. 

The fact that we are created by God – as is the entire world in which we live – allows us to see something of God around us.  In all that He creates, God leaves His “Trinitarian stamp.”  There is an inner logic to every person and to the whole world that is rooted in the Trinity.  The more we come to understand who God is, the more we are able to see who we are and why we are present in the world – and why we exist as male and female. 

Saturday, February 7, 2015

TOB: What is a gift?

Time for the Family 2/07/2015 , , , , No comments :
 We continue here our explorations into St. John Paul II’s series of Wednesday Catecheses, which eventually became known as Man and Woman He Created Them: a Theology of the Body (TOB, for short). To see other posts on this topic, click here.

It is no secret that John Paul II was both involved in and influenced by the Second Vatican Council. Though his attendance at the Council was occasionally spotty, due to the then Cardinal Wojtyła’s passport being revoked by the Communist government in Poland, he participated in many of the planning committees through written interventions and the like. When he was elected to the papacy, it is clear that the late pope took seriously the task of propagating and interpreting the teachings of Vatican II. The documents appear often in his writing, and even if there are no direct references, there is usually some reflection on a theme that emerged from the ecumenical council.

One theme that is interwoven throughout John Paul II’s writing is that of gift. One of the most-quoted lines by the saint is from Gaudium et spes (GS) 24:
The likeness [between the communion of men and the communion of the Persons of the Trinity] reveals that man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself, except through a sincere gift of himself.

Looking back through his writings, it becomes clear that this line is special to John Paul II. It’s included in almost every one of his encyclicals, and much of his other writing as well. TOB is of course no exception here. And “gift” carries here some meaning both beyond and below, as it were, the presenting of another person with a token. It has more depth as it is used by the Council Fathers in GS and in John Paul II’s work, including TOB. Let’s try and unpack that a bit.

In the Wednesday Catecheses, the first place gift appears is not with respect to man giving himself to woman, or vice versa, but with respect to God giving man the gift of creation. This language is radical, even if it may seem trite to us today.

**Reader beware: generalizations and simplifications in the next couple of paragraphs, though I think none of it false. It just needs more nuance after further discussion.**

Pre-Christian philosophical man had two choices (more or less) when it came to understanding the divine: either there was a god or gods who were very close to man, creating man because he somehow needed him—man’s sacrifices, man’s offerings were some source of power or pleasure, for example—or there was a god who was absolutely indifferent to the world, who created unknowingly or didn’t care at all. There were attempts to bridge the gap between these two pictures of divinity with the image of an indifferent god, a demi-urge, subordinate to the supreme being..  This demi-urge was responsible for making the world and consequently  in some sense, needed his creatures. In the end, even this alternative takes us back to the perennial philosophical seesaw of the necessity of the world to God or the absolute indifference of God to the world.

Can we say that God needs his creatures, or that creation was necessary? We cannot. To do so would be to put God at the mercy of his creatures, and ultimately would make him just a more powerful version of ourselves. But can we say that God is indifferent to us? That he created the world arbitrarily, through some sort of spasmodic will? . . . This doesn’t seem quite right either, especially in a Christian worldview. This is, after all, the Father who sent his Son for us, and the Son who suffered and died for us. There is a lot at stake there for a God who is simply indifferent to his creation.

So how do we cut through this dialectic of need and arbitrary will in God? By trying to understand the logic of gift. Let’s think about this a bit: one never truly needs to give a gift, one just wants to. But when you decide to give a gift, you’re not simply indifferent to what happens to it after you’ve given it away, nor are you indifferent to how the person receives it. But you do give it in all freedom, meaning there are no claims or qualifications on how the person is to use it; rather, you hope that they enjoy it, receive it well, and use it well. True gifts are not perfunctory things.

This all points to there being such a thing as a logic of gift. In a way, when I give a gift, I’m giving part of myself. I’ve put thought into it, time and/or money, etc., so this thing is not entirely different from myself, and yet, here I am, giving it away freely to another person, to do with it what they will. Indeed, I don’t diminish myself in giving a gift, even if it is part of me. In fact, the opposite is likely true. The gift in some sense unites the giver and the receiver: the giver is really giving part of himself, while the receiver really receives it into himself.
"Creation of Adam" is in the Public Domain.

So too with creation. The logic of creation is gift: God is entirely free to give, and we, in some sense, are entirely free to either receive it well, or to reject it. It is there for us, so that it may serve us, and we may serve it. And God is not entirely indifferent to whether we choose to receive or reject His gift.

But just as a gift tells something about the one who gives it, so too can creation tell us about our Creator. If the logic of creation is gift, then that logic in an analogical sense is also within our Creator. Now, if a gift really does unite the giver and receiver, we might be able to say that the logic of gift looks a bit like communion, and that this logic could be carried up—again, analogically—into God. And of course we already know this to be true: the Trinity is a communion of life and love. The point then is that the logic of creation is not outside of or extrinsic to the logic of the life of the Trinity. The Creator is not foreign to his creation.

But the stakes of this gift,  the gift of creation, are raised higher than any gift we could possibly give or receive because in the gift of creation, not only is the gift given, but the receiver is given too. That is to say, man is created, and he is created as the receiver of the gift of creation. Thus, the logic of gift is written into him as well, into his very being, his very body. Therefore, the logic that enables (so to speak) creation in the first place, a logic of gift and communion that already exists in the Trinity, can be seen in the flesh of man himself.

But what does this mean for man’s existence and his existence-as-embodied creature? First, it seems to me that gratitude is then the disposition of our existence, and that gratitude always directs us to another—we’re always directed out of ourselves, and again, our bodies help us to see this. This gratitude is not, however, simply how we react to God, rather, as an existential disposition, it means that that is how we’re disposed to everyone and everything. If creation is a gift, if my very existence is a gift, along with the existence of everything else, gratitude has to be how we first look at the world.

But(!) look at the radicality of this: it immediately communicates a different way of relating to the rest of the created world, God and each other. Gratitude is not bitter: one doesn’t view a gift in light of one’s own neediness—that is, we don’t hold it against the giver that he sees something we need or desire and then gives it to us. In this logic of gift and reciprocal gratitude—in this logic of communion—our embodiment and corresponding finitude is not something about which we should be ashamed; it is rather the space to allow a gift to be given in the first place. The limitedness of my body is not a curse I must master or overcome, but precisely the place at which I am open to generosity.

Gift, then, indicates an entire way of understanding and responding to God, the world, my own body, and everything in between. We were created as gifts to ourselves and to each other, in the image and likeness of the Trinity, an image and likeness to which our corporeal form is not incidental. To give oneself, as John Paul II highlights often in his quoting of GS 24, allows one to enter into the logic and life of God himself.



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