Do you face life with a fatalistic attitude? Do you always find yourself dragging yourself to your daily activities? - Daily Reflections March 3,2014

WE ARE CREATURES OF CHOICE

 

I’d like to share with you the story of this extraordinary young Italian girl, the first laywoman member of the Focolare movement, who was beatified — a first step to sainthood.

       While playing tennis, Chiara Luce Badano felt a sharp pain on her shoulders. Later on, she was diagnosed to be suffering from an advanced stage of bone cancer. Chiara was an ordinary young girl: beautiful, athletic and friendly. She failed once in Math and occasionally tested the patience of her parents. But there was something extraordinary about her — her love for Jesus, especially Jesus among the poor. She visited sick friends regularly even if they were afflicted with contagious diseases. Being sick herself, she heroically faced bone cancer, even refusing treatments that would at least alleviate the pain, and offered her suffering for the conversion of sinners and as a participation in the suffering of Christ. At the age of 18 in 1990, Chiara succumbed to bone cancer, but her inspiration lives on until today.

       Peter in today’s First Reading tells us: “You may for a time have to suffer the distress of many trials, but this is so that your faith, which is more precious than the passing splendor of fire-tried gold, may by its genuineness lead to praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ appears” (1 Peter 1:6-8). Facing life’s challenges through the lens of Jesus’ resurrection is rising above the uncertainty of chance with the certainty of choice.

       Isn’t this what Chiara lived out most powerfully? What could be more ordinary than death? Death chanced upon Chiara and yet she chose to be life-giving even as she was dying. Even as the cancer was continuously chewing her bones away, she taught us how to live while dying. She met the ordinariness of death with extraordinary vitality. That is why she is a Blessed of the Church now.

       We may be helpless in the face of chance, but we are over and above chance with our power of choice. Fr. Joel Jason

 

REFLECTION QUESTIONS: Do you face life with a fatalistic attitude? Do you always find yourself dragging yourself to your daily activities?

 

God, our Father, arouse in me the power of Your gift of choice. May this gift help me realize that he who has a why to live can bear with almost any how. Amen.