DOES YOUR LIFE MATTER?

aUGUST 16, 2008

The Apostle Paul made a claim about himself that many people would have trouble applying to their own lives. He said, "By God's grace I am what I am" (1 Cor 15:10).

It's easy to feel unimportant, to feel you've been given few graces by God. After all, isn't this what life teaches us? Doesn't the world treat most people as unimportant? Only a few students will ever be at the head of the class or hear their names called out to receive special achievement rewards. Only a few will have the skills to gain prominence in their fields of professional endeavor. Only the very best at things like music, athletics, or art ever become good enough to be paid for it, and only a few of them ever reach superstardom. And even then, their names are recognized for a short while, then forgotten.

The apparent insignificance of our individual human lives is strongly reinforced anytime there's a funeral and we go to the cemetery. Just glance at all the tombstones bearing names we cannot recognize, or perhaps even pronounce. Those who could recognize the names, and who knew and maybe loved those people, are perhaps gone now, too. Maybe some of those people were once famous, but their lives ran their courses once and for all and they now seem to be utterly forgotten, each one abandoned to the oblivion of the past.

Everyone wants to be somebody, to have left a mark, to have accomplished something. The Guiness Book of World Records is a testament to the sometimes crazy things people will do just so they can say there was at least something they did better or faster or longer or more times than anyone else. It is an effort to have significance.

The desire to be important, popular, or famous, however, easily leads to a self‑inflation that is like an expanding bubble ‑‑ it's only a matter of time before it bursts.

To illustrate, men who attach too much importance to their professional lives often become utterly lost when they retire. Women who rely too much on physical beauty in order to be attractive to men can easily discover when their beauty fades, as it eventually does, that they have never cultivated their spiritual beauty adequately enough to be able to enjoy deep relationships with other people ‑‑ men or women ‑‑ later in life.

A psychotherapist tells the story of trying to help two disturbed women, each of whom claimed to be the Virgin Mary. Neither would let go of this self‑delusion, and so neither could live a normal life or find happiness. One day the therapist got a great idea. He put the two women together and invited them to introduce themselves to each other. Each was shocked and outraged that the other claimed the same identity she was clinging to. Eventually, one woman paused and said, "Wait a minute, if you're the Virgin Mary, then I must be someone else". This woman, noted the therapist, quickly became responsive to treatment, came to accept herself, and was soon released from the mental hospital. The other woman, who would not let go of her delusion, reported the therapist, remained unchanged and unhappy. There is no happiness without sanity, and no sanity without letting go of the blindness that pride produces.

God has made each of us utterly unique, and what you and I are, we are by his grace. What the world regards as important is not what he prizes. If only each of us could see God's glory hidden in our individual lives, all jealousies, and all the strife that comes from the desire to be more powerful or important than the next person, would cease.

Here is the way to significance that God's Son, Jesus Christ, showed us: "You know how those who exercise authority among the Gentiles lord it over them; their great ones make their importance felt. It cannot be like that with you. Anyone among you who aspires to greatness must serve the rest, and whoever wants to rank first among you must serve the needs of all. Such is the case with the Son of man who has come, not to be served by others, but to serve, to give his own life as a ransom for many" (Mt 20:25‑28).

Elsewhere he says, speaking of the coming reign of God, "Many who are first shall come last, and the last shall come first" (Mt 19:30).

It is not wrong to aspire to greatness. God created us to be great. What is ruinous, though, is wrongheaded ideas of greatness. Contentment of heart lies in desiring only what God desires for us, and in being able to see, and to say with St. Paul, "I am what I am by the grace of God".

+Bishop Raymundo J. Peña

last updated 11-Jan-2010 8:22 sitemap