Give it All

Venice Rialto
where modern banking began

Blessed indeed will you be in their inability to repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. (Luke 14:14)

Blessed will you be in their inability to repay you. [Spanish]

When God became a man and offered His life on the cross for the sake of the sinful human race—the very human race that nailed Him there–that was no radical departure, or change of character, on God’s part. That is Who He is—Who the Creator is, the Lord and Master of all things. He gives. With no thought of repayment. After all, no one or nothing could ever repay Him anyway.

God never needed a world or a universe. He didn’t wake up one day, and think to Himself, ‘I am bored, and I am hungry!’ and therefore He created Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, so that He could watch Casablanca. And then created peanuts and caramel, so He could have a Snickers.

snickers

No. The Lord God enjoys perpetual and perfect blessedness, without any snacks or videos. But: from His unimaginably wonderful state of perpetual and perfect holiness, God generously gives. He gives everything. He gives existence. He gives beauty. He gives meaning and hope in life. He gives, with pure divine generosity.

At every Sunday Mass we declare together, I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

In this pilgrim life, in the fallen world, we do things like ask for and keep receipts. We get bills and invoices. We have bank accounts. (Tomorrow evening I leave for a trip to Italy–including Venice, where they invented banking.) None of us has unlimited material wherewithal.

But God does have unlimited wherewithal.

And He commands us to make His way of measuring our way of measuring, too. And His way of measuring is: not to measure at all. He just gives.

He says: Do not worry. Can you make yourself any taller by worrying? Can you grow more hair, by your own will? No. Your Father will take care of you. Just love. Now. Love with everything you have.

Ever heard the sports expression, “to leave it all on the court?”  “At the 2016 Olympics, Carmelo Anthony left it all on the court.”

Well, God says: Leave yourself, child, on the court of divine love. Love the people who don’t like you. Love the people who drive in an annoying manner. Love the rude and the ignorant. Love the snide and the petty. Love the losers.

Love them all, because your heavenly Father loves them all. If He didn’t love them, they wouldn’t exist. And if He didn’t want us to love all the people in front of us, then He wouldn’t have made the world turn in such a way that they cross our path.

One thought on “Give it All

  1. I once read an author transcribing the story of a saint who heard it from a Poor Soul that John Lennon was in Heaven. Praise God! I like to think it was in part due to the writing and performing of “All You Need is Love.” Wisdom hides from many of us, but shines like the sun to others.

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