In my time in ministry, first as a diocesan seminarian and now as a Dominican student brother, I have had the privilege of meeting a wide variety of incredibly faithful people. Yet one interaction I had recently stands out. Not long ago I was speaking with a woman who is over 100 years old. Throughout our conversation, she kept saying over and over again, “My life has been such a gift of God. I don’t know why he has been so good to me.” This gave me pause, and it caused me to think: have I treated the life God has given me as a gift?
When we receive gifts from our friends and family, there is often a great source of joy in the other seeing us use the gifts that we were given. Similarly, God delights at seeing us use the gifts he has given us well, and he always wants to bestow even more upon us. But sometimes the response necessary to receive God’s gifts seems to demand much from us. We might start to panic, trying to fit everything into place and micromanage every detail. A good example of this is the Gospel story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman (John 4:4–26). She is more focused on the social implications and what others may think than listening to Christ. Jesus, however, does not answer her questions directly; rather he tells her that if she knew who he was, she should have asked him for water and he would have given her the gift of living water. We can at times be like the Samaritan woman, focused on those things which are accidental to what God is really offering. With this in mind we should rather take stock of all the good things that God has given us. This helps us to see that he is in control and that we can trust in him.
In my own life I felt God calling me to enter seminary out of high school. But even after making an act of trust and following God’s call, he still had something else planned. While in seminary, I felt God calling me one step further: to religious life in the Order of Preachers. In such matters I could have asked him: “Why are you calling me somewhere else when you called me here? I like it here. Are you sure I will like leaving and going somewhere else? What if it doesn’t work out?” I can say now that looking back at the winding path that God led me on and learning to ask the right questions on how to best follow God’s will, I can repeat with my centenarian friend, “God has been so good to me, why has he done this?”
God knew what he had in store for me when he called me first to the seminary and then to the Order of Preachers, although it required me twice to step into the unknown. Now I look back on all the good things I have been given, and I give thanks to God for my life, my faith, the friends I have made along the way, and the friends I have here now in the Order. Lent is a great time to take stock of all the good things that God has given us and to realize our utter dependence on God while also realizing he is with us every step of the way. Remember the words of Christ to his Apostles before his Ascension: “Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world” (Matt 28:20).
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Image: Sébastien Bourdon, Jesus and the Samaritan
