Msgr Robert Barron formulates the meaning
of Being in the abstract: “your being
increases in the measure that you give it away.”
My comment: The reason
for this is the Trinitarian nature of the human person imaging the Son Who is
nothing but “for” the Father. The more one gives self away “for” God and the
other, the more one really is who one is as image of the Son. And so, it is only by giving oneself
away that one finds self by an ever increasing ontological density (or the
reverse). His work "The Priority of Christ" [Brazos 2007] is the development of this theme. It is the core of the New Evangelization as announced and deepened in St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI,
He
writes for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time: “The story of the multiplication
of the loaves and fishes - versions of which can be found in all four Gospels –
is one of the clearest exemplifications of the spiritual principle that Saint
John Paul II formulated as the law of the gift. Here is the principle in the
abstract: your being increases in the measure that you give it away. The world,
or course, teaches just the opposite, that your being increases in the measure
that you hang on to what you have.
“Here is the
spiritual ‘physics’ behind the John Paul Idea. Since God has no need of
anything, whatever is given to him returns to the giver elevated and multiplied.
Anything returned to God has no need of anything, whatever is given to him
returns to the giver elevated and multiplied. Anything returned to God breaks,
as it were, against the rock of the divine self-sufficiently and comes back,
super-abundantly, to the giver. So in the Gospel story, the disciples have very
little – two fish and five loaves – but they return these simple gifts to the Giver
of all things, and they find them multiplied unto the feeding of five thousand.
The same principle holds in regard to the Eucharist. We bring a few tiny gifts
to the Lord; bread, wine and water. But they return to us infinitely enhanced
as the Bloody and Blood of Jesus, and they serve to feed the deepest hunger of
our hearts.
“The Law of the Gift
is on display in the lives of all the saints. Saint Benedict Joseph Labre was a
homeless beggar on the streets of Rome, and he most likely suffered from mental
illness. But what little he had he gave totally to Christ and he radiated
goodness in all directions. Take even those gifts of yours that seem inadequate,
and give them to the Lord. You will find them increased, thirty, sixty, or a
hundred-fold” [From Magnificat].
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