Wednesday, June 21, 2023
Memorial of Saint Alysius Gonzaga, Religious
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Passing it on
If our Saint of the Day had attended his own university, he would barely have graduated before he died. Not much grad school for Signore Gonzaga; caring for plague victims in a new Jesuit Roman hospital, he caught the disease himself. He was 23 years old.
But he did start young.
At age 7 Aloysius experienced a profound spiritual quickening. His prayers included the Office of Mary, the psalms, and other devotions. At age 9 he came from his hometown of Castiglione to Florence to be educated; by age 11 he was teaching catechism to poor children, fasting three days a week, and practicing great austerities.
I think about our kids, and their kids. When Miles’ cousin Aly (age 10) got baptized last year he asked his mom about what it meant. “Accepting Jesus into your heart,” Andi said tenderly. “I’ve already done that,” Miles said. Sometimes he tells Bible stories to his brother Jasper, who will be four next month.
Brothers and sisters, consider this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each must do as already determined, without sadness or compulsion, because God loves a cheerful giver.
Before Chris and Marc were ten years old, their gerbil was swept up by the vacuum cleaner. No more gerbil. Weeping and wailing. Marc was the animal guy, but Chris felt the most pain, like he suddenly knew what it was like himself to be swept up. Marc wanted to get another gerbil right away. Chris wanted to give this one a proper burial and take a day or two to grieve.
Marc has grown much more sensitive, often helping others at his own expense. He’s cared for several cats and dogs over his forty years, and more importantly he’s cared for friends who have needed his help, long and short term. His capacity for that kindness seems to be growing as he gets older.
Before Miles and Jasper, Andi and Aki had a cute little hedgehog they named Manny. A couple weeks ago Manny’s name popped up on my Jacqui Lawson birthday card reminder list. Manny died a few years ago, but I still send a card. Andi’s heart opens, she receives the sentiment, and remembers her bristly friend.
The one who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply yur seed and increase the harvest of your righteousness.
Tenderness and compassion toward animals and humans must be a natural and necessary outgrowth of receiving God’s love, joy and peace ourselves. We don’t always think that way, I guess, but we should. And it can so easily go the other way when we forget to pass on what we’ve received. Our morality loses its way. In 1965 Larry McMurtry wrote In a Narrow Grave about the state of his state of Texas. He writes about the Texas Rangers, and attitudes that continue to prevail:
There are places, apparently, where the passage of a century changes very little, and the Texas border is such a place. One gains no popularity there today by suggesting that Mexicans have rights to something other than air, frijoles, and goat’s milk. The farm-labor disputes of 1967—disputes in which the Texas Rangers played a suspect role—make this very clear. I know a farm manager, a man but recently migrated from the Valley to the High Plains, who was sincerely shocked by the fact that Mexicans were beginning to want houses to live in. Tents and truck-beds, fifty cents an hour cash and a free goat every week or two no longer satisfied them. They had come to consider themselves human beings, an attitude which filled the manager with astonishment and vague dismay. When Mexicans become thus aberrated it is time, in Texas, to call in the Rangers. From In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas (p. 71).
How much of this is just poor parenting? Our culture abounds in this, of course. But it doesn’t have to. We don’t have to. St. Gonzaga, lead the way. Teach us to number our days aright, and learn the art of loving.
You are being enriched in every way for all generosity, which through us produces thanksgiving to God.
(2 Corinthians 9, Psalm 112, John 14, Matthew 6)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
#
