Count your blessings
Some times I heard people crying their heart to me, depressed and envious of others’ good fortune in life. “Father,” they would ask me, “why are they more blest than me? Why do they own this or that? Why is that family so loving while mine is not? Why my parents are cruel while my friends’ are not?” These people think that they are less privileged than others who have what they do not have. But are they truly less favored?
Some people sometimes have the habit of wishing to have their parish priest the one who already belongs to another parish. They sometimes wish to have a different priest other than the one who celebrates the Mass with them. Why? Are they less favored?
I don’t think so. What I think and see is that these people are missing the point they are losing because of it. In wishing to have what others have, they miss their own blessings. They fail to appreciate their own giftedness and fail to develop whatever potential they have because they focus on what others have while neglecting their own. Moreover, they failed to see the giftedness of the persons around them, their talents and the wonders they’re capable of doing. They failed to see the beauty of their own environment or situation in life.
They lose because they’re not going to experience the uniqueness of their own personality, the opportunities for growth that their environment could bring, and the beauty of the character of the persons around them. They lose because, as Jesus puts it, they failed to recognize the time of their visitation.
The lepers in Israel were not cured because they could not believe that there was a prophet sent by God among them. Jesus was not able to perform many miracles in his own native place because his people did not believe that He, one of their town mates, Joe the carpenter’s boy, was capable of making miracles happen. The town folks failed to see their blessedness in Jesus because they were thinking of having the messiah that would come from Betlehem. Because of that, they lost.
Let us not like them. What we need to do is to count our own blessings and giftedness. This Lenten season, let us make use of our blessedness as Christians. Let us thank the Lord for the people around us which we feel it would be inconceivable that God could speak to us through such people but indeed they bring the message of God. And let the Lord help us to see in those people around us God’s abiding presence
