Life: Gift - Loan - Rental

"I want to spend the night in this caravan shelter," said a pilgrim. 
"How dare you call my sumptuous palace a caravan shelter?"
"And whose palace was it before it was yours?" asked the pilgrim. 
"It was my father’s," replied the nobleman.
"And where is your father now?"
-He is dead.
- And whose palace was it before it was your father’s?
- It was my grandfather's...
"And where is your grandfather now?"
-He is dead...
"Whose palace will it be after your death?"
- My son’s...
"Then," concluded the pilgrim, "a building in which different people live for a certain period, wouldn’t you agree that it is a caravan shelter?"

We are stewards of “our” lives, not owners
Naked we all came out of our mother's womb and naked we all return to God's bosom, we are not owners of anything, because we cannot own anything indefinitely, not even our own life can we own indefinitely. 

As Christians, we should get rid of possessive pronouns from our vocabulary and replace them with “administrative” pronouns instead. In our lives, instead of using, the verbs “To have” and “To Possess”, we should use the verbs to use and to administer. Things were made to be used, not possessed, or loved; likewise, people were made to be loved, not possessed, or used.  

We really do not own anything. Of all the resources we claim to own, and as the poet says, just as we were not consulted at the time of our conception, that is, no one asked us if we wanted to live or not, we can conclude that not even our life is ours. 

"Done, next breast," said a woman breastfeeding her child. We are put into this life like a windup toy
or a battery powered toy, in both cases our life lasts for as long as the winding mechanism or the battery last. We have no control over the time of our life because we are not the masters of time or life., because we are not the masters of time or life.

We are stewards, not only of the material or spiritual (talents) resources that we use in life, but also of life itself constituted of time - energy - fundamental option, that is, our vocation or mission and of the place we occupy in the world and in society. 

God is the owner of everything that exists, including us. Although, unlike other creatures, we were created in His image and likeness, we are merely stewards of our lives and will one day have to give an account of this stewardship. 

"God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; you have been weighed on the scales and found wanting; your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians." Daniel 5:26-28 

The prophet Daniel interpreted the dream of the king of Babylon. At the conclusion of his interpretation, he told the king that by putting on one side of the scale what he could have been and on the other what he was at that present moment, or what he was called to be and what he has become, that is, his conquests and his defeats, his good deeds and his evil deeds, the negative side outweighed the positive. 

Things were made to be used, not possessed, because they are not an end in themselves, but only a means of life; they are at the service of life. People were made to be loved, not to be possessed or used, because they are an end in themselves and never a means. 

Perversity is when one loves things and uses people to have more things. Those who relate to things in this way see life only through lenses of power and possession. For them, to love is to possess things and people; they can never be happy, because no one likes to be used or possessed, themselves included. 

Life as a gift
One day a peasant knocked on the monastery door; when the brother doorkeeper opened the door, the peasant gave him a magnificent bunch of grapes. "These are for you," said the peasant, "for having helped me in times of scarcity." The brother doorkeeper received the grapes with great joy and thanked him. Later, when he was about to eat them, he thought, "I'd rather give them to the Abbot, I think he deserves them for the way he runs the monastery." 

The Abbot received them with the same joy as the brother doorkeeper and when he was about to eat them in his cell, he remembered that they would delight one of the brothers who was ill. The sick brother received them with joy and immediately thought of the brother cook who had looked after him so kindly. As soon as he appeared with his lunch, he gave them to him. He admired the beauty, fragrance and perfection of the grapes and thought of giving them to the brother sacristan, since they were reminiscent of those offered at Mass. 

The brother sacristan received them and understood the symbol, but he didn't want to eat them, because he thought of the youngest novice who was in a vocational crisis and gladly gave them to him. Finally, the brother novice remembered the first person who had opened the monastery door to him and gave them to the brother doorkeeper. In this way, the brother doorkeeper understood that the grapes had really been destined for him and no one else, so he savoured them slowly one by one. (Summarized and adapted from Paulo Coelho's The Circle of Joy).

This story illustrates perfectly that life is a gift, yes, but a gift that is not meant to be possessed but given away. In theology and in books on spirituality, we often find the expression "gift of life", expressing that life is a gift, a gift from God. If it has been given to us, then we own it, which, as we have said, is not true, because we have no way of retaining this gift indefinitely. 

For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. Matthew 16:25

The other person’s life is an absolute value for me, my life is a relative value for me. Life is to be given away, to be consumed in the service of others or of a human cause. Our life does not revolve around us, it is not and should not be about us, but about something outside of ourselves because it does not justify itself. It is not and should never be self-referential. 

We use our life, time, and energy to cultivate human values that are worth more than life itself. These values are absolute because they are the reason for life. They are the values we live for, the values to which we dedicate every minute of our lives and for which we would be willing to give up this very life in a heartbeat for them if it was required of us. 

Each of the values, talents, or gifts that shape our lives, we have them to be used for our own good and for the good of others. If we stop using them, we stop having them or we lose them. In this sense, while it is true that we only give what we have, it is also true that we only have what we give. 

On the other hand, to live is to love, and to love is to give oneself to the other. When we give ourselves, we are no longer in our own possession. In fact, that is why we are never more vulnerable as when we give ourselves to another out of love. The other person has an immense power over us and can abuse that power if his or her love for us is not reciprocated, that is if he or she does not give himself or herself up to us too. 

In a Christian marriage, love is always trinitarian, that is, the two give himself or herself to the other, without anyone possessing anyone, because God is the one who possesses both -- I give myself to God through you, you give yourself to God through me. The two give themselves to each other without either of them owning the other. 

Life as a loan
‘For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. Matthew 25:14-18

Whatever the circumstances of one’s birth, whether one is the child carefully planned by the parents, who even choose the sex of the baby, or the child of a couple, neither wanted or planned, who comes into the world by accident, or the child of one night stand, an illegitimate child born out of wedlock, or the child of a prostitute, or even the child from a rape, all of them are equally children of God.

If God has willed them to come into this world, whatever the circumstances of their birth may have been, all of them, absolutely all of them, without exception, are children of God and their lives are viable and precious. God has endowed each one of His children with a project, a place in the world and in society, and sufficient talents to make this life viable in carrying out the project that He has designed for each of them.

God is, therefore, the architect of our life, He is the one who has the designs, the plans, and the calculations for the construction of our life, a construction that ends with our death and passage to eternal life to the bosom of God. 

The plan as well as the talents and limitations to carry it out are revealed to us little by little, as the need arise. We do not receive the shingles for the roof until the foundations are dug and firmly set. 

The parable of the talents illustrates that life is a loan, a credit that God has given us to manage. As in the parable, we must give an account in the end, that is, the loan must yield profits. 

We all receive certain talents and not others. Everyone receives the talents necessary to make their life viable, but no one receives all the talents. The important thing is to develop, to make the talents received bear fruit and not to hide them and then admire or envy the talents that others have received, trying to live other people’s lives, which one can never succeed in doing.

The act or attitude of envying the talents of others is tantamount to hiding one’s own talents, because when our eyes focus on a distant object, they cannot focus on whatever is near at the same time. When we look at other people’s talents, we cannot see our own, so it is as if we are trying to live a life that is not ours and, of course, we'll never live happily, with meaning and fulfillment. By trying to be who we are not, anyone can beat us and be superior to us; by being who we are, however, no one can beat us. 

From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded. Luke 12:48

The fruitlessness of the cities of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, even though Jesus sowed great many seeds there, is also strongly criticized. Perhaps if this sowing had been done outside of Israel, in the Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sodom, the result would have been different. Therefore, the Last Judgment will be more lenient towards Sodom than towards these cities. Prophetically, only ruins remain of them today. (Luke 10:13-16)

Life as a rental
There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. Matthew 21:33-34

The Psalm says that the Lord's vineyard is the house of Israel, but when we hear this gospel, we must personalize it. The Lord’s vineyard is each one of us. Or rather, it is our life, and we are the ones who rent it, we are the caretakers. We must bear fruit, make the vineyard yield, this must be our concern, that our lives bear fruit, that they are full of good works. But the spirituality that has been inculcated in us says that we must keep ourselves clean, avoid evil and sin, but it does not say that we must do good.

Positive Spirituality
The mania for cleanliness is a psychic disorder. There are people who spend their lives washing their hands, and maybe they can stand before God with clean hands one day, but God will tell them that their hands are empty... Our spiritual life focuses on avoiding evil, not doing good. That was what the rich young man had always done, keeping the commandments that only told him what not to do.  

Christ's commandments are positive: to love God above all things and all people, our neighbor as ourselves, and ourselves as God loves us. These are commandments that imply positive action, unlike the 10 commandments that only exhort us to avoid evil, not to intentionally do good.

At the end of our lives, we will not be judged for the evil we did, but for the good we have not done but could have done. We will be judged for having been bad Samaritans, for having witnessed brothers and sisters in need and, being able to do something, we did nothing, we waved them aside and told ourselves that it was none of our business, that it was not our problem.

Nature abhors emptiness
‘When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting place, but it finds none. Then it says, “I will return to my house from which I came.” When it comes, it finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings along seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So will it be also with this evil generation. Matthew 12:43-45

By basing our lives in avoiding sin, we are like trying to empty our souls of evil, forgetting that nature abhors emptiness. It is a law of physics whose application in the spiritual field is proven in the gospel quoted above.

There is no such thing as emptiness in nature, it can only be created artificially. There is no such thing as an empty bottle because it may be empty of wine or water, but never of air. If we want to remove the air from a bottle, we can extract it artificially with a machine, creating a vacuum, or we can naturally fill it with wine. 

At the Last Judgment, those who are saved are those who helped the Lord in the poor and the destitute and gave him something to eat, something to drink, welcomed him when he was a stranger or a pilgrim, clothed him when he was naked, and visited him when he was in prison or in hospital. The damned were not the evil ones, but those who turned their backs on all the opportunities that life gave them to do good, because their only concern was to avoid doing evil, (Matthew 25:31-46).

A New Examination of Conscience and a New Confession
Based on Matthew's text on the Last Judgment, you need to stop occupying your psyche with evil and occupy it with good; use your time and energy doing good wherever and for whoever crosses your path, as there will be no shortage of opportunities, instead of using your energy to fight evil inside of yourself by trying to eradicate it on order to become empty of evil. 

"He who has no money has no vices" while you are busy doing good, you cannot do evil, because you will not have the time or inclination for it; as good occupies in your mind and heart the place that was previously occupied by evil, it makes room for good in the same way that wine when it enters the glass, naturally expels the air.

Based on this same philosophy, there is a drug that fights cancer without attacking it with chemotherapy or radiation; what this drug does is to destroy the blood vessels that feed cancer cells; without food, they die. 

When we fill our lives with good works, when we spend our time doing good, evil disappears of its own accord. We cannot do good and evil at the same time; when we occupy our time with good, evil disappears for lack of time to do it. 

In a positive spirituality, there are only sins of omission. My examination of conscience will consist of reviewing my day-to-day life and identifying the situations that required me to act in solidarity; my sins to confess will be the times when I could have done good and chose not to.

Conclusion – Life is a gift to be given away, not to be possessed. It is a loan that we will one day pay back with interest, and a rental for which we must pay rent. 

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC