Eucharistic Reflection - The Law of The Gift

We cannot fully find ourselves - that is, become fully what God intended us to be, live life in the richest measure, find a deeply satisfying happiness - except through the sincere gift of ourselves in love to God and to those He is placed in our lives. Saint John Paul II understood this truth as fundamental in our lives. The Law of the Gift is the only path to personal fulfillment and to joy in this life and the next. The Consecration in the Mass is a supreme instance of this law, and the primary source of the grace that helps us live it. When we ask for a heart like Christ's, we are asking to live the Law of the Gift.

In one of his talks, Venerable Fulton Sheen shared a story that I never forgot. A young girl was sitting in the kitchen of her home, watching her mother as she worked. This day, she asked a question she had long wanted to raise. Her mother's hands were covered with scars. With the bluntness of a child, the girl said, “Mother, how did your hands get so ugly?” Her mother replied, when you were a baby, one day you were sleeping upstairs in your crib. While you slept, the house caught fire. I ran upstairs and found that your blankets had already caught the flames. I tore the blankets off from you, picked you up, and rain with you out of the house. This is how I got these scars. The young girl looked at her mother and said, “Mother, I love your scars.”

I love your scars. Nothing is happier in this life than to hear on the lips of another, or to read in the eyes of another, these words: “I love your scars.” I love the way you have given of yourself for me, the way you have given me your time, you're listening ear, your help, how you were there for me when I needed you, even when it cost you tiredness and sacrifice. I love your scars. We cannot, Saint John Paul II tells us, fully find ourselves except through the sincere gift of ourselves.

(From A Biblical Way Of Praying The Mass by Father Tim Gallagher, O.M.V.)