As time goes by....

As you grow older, and your pace slows down, and you have a little more time to think, wonderful things happen to you. You begin to appreciate things. For instance, life – the beauty of the world around you.

The glory of waking up in the morning to a new day. One more day, this day, God has given you as a gift.

The song of the birds in the early morning, or the patter of rain on the windows.

The quiet cheerfulness of those you love, their warmth, their care for you.

The joy of your favorite breakfast. The Greek word for breakfast is "ARISTON". It means "BEST." It’s the best meal of the day, always.

The adventure of working. The hunger to create something new. The desire to help those with whom you live, at least a little.

The deep sense of compassion when you hear the troubles of friend. Vicariously, you live with him; you share with him; you try to carry the burden with him.

The sense of peace, when you are alone.

The comfort of prayer.

When you are young, you meet people, you like them, you enjoy being with them. But when you are older, suddenly you feel with them! You see depths of goodness, of generosity, of love, of sacrifice that you never noticed before.

I have a friend, who is a young mother. She has been praying to win the lottery. When she told me this, she said: "Please don’t laugh at me!". . . . But why does she want to win the lottery? For the sake of her children - to give them the things she knows they need, but which she can not give them, now. And to give to the poor people around her who are destitute. She wants to give, and prays that she may be able to give!

Of course, she is giving already. She is giving the most beautiful gift of all – herself. And she does not even realize that this is sanctity! In loving her children, in loving the poor, she is loving God. She will know it at the Judgment, when God says to her: "So long as you have done it to the least of these, my little ones, you have done it to Me!"

When you are older, you can see the great virtues of people, even in their faults. This mother helps her children to study. She helps them with their homework. Sometimes, when they are slow in understanding, she gets upset, and scolds them. Later, she regrets this. When she kisses them goodnight, and tucks them into bed, she says: "I’m sorry!" And then she tells them: "When you grow up, don’t be like me! Be kind, always."

If those children grow up like her, their mother, they will all be saints. She blames herself for losing her temper, and forgets that this happens when she is trying to help them, with all her heart.

I am amazed at the depth of sanctity in the ordinary Filipino father. When his children are sick he will sell the finest treasures of his house to put them in the hospital, and to get them everything they need. He will do this at great personal sacrifice. And he will not even realize that he is being sacrificial. He will weep, because he can not do more.

Even when his children do things that are radically wrong, and get into serious trouble, he will stand by them. He will condemn the thing they did wrong, but he will do all in his power to help them recover from it. It is easy to be a father when your children are successful, and earning medals. It is hard when your children seem to be failing, on all fronts. But when disaster strikes, that is when the love and loyalty of the Filipino father comes to the surface.

When you are older, you see the beauty of love, and the courage of sacrifice, with crystal clarity — as you never saw it when you were young. It is a gift of God that comes to you with time, carefully wrapped in the mild hardships and pains of old age.

And when you are older, you appreciate sounds. The sounds of love are the sweetest. But that sound is no longer the young, emotional "I love you". The real sounds of love, all over the world, are:

"Dinner is ready!"

"Your shirt is on the chair!"

"I have tickets to the game. Do you want to go?"

"Better hurry! We only have five minutes!’

"Be careful! It’s hot"

"I found that book you were looking for! I found it!"

"Look at that beautiful sunset!"

And you appreciate music! When you are very young, you fall asleep during the concert. But when you are older, you listen in wrapt admiration. You feel the sweetness in the soft strains of the violin. You share the emotion of the singer. And your whole body reacts to the rhythm of the orchestra.

The melodies you learned by heart when you were young suddenly come back to you, playing in your mind, in your heart, in your memory. But now they seem to be so much more beautiful than they were when you first heard them, years ago. And now you really understand the lyrics.

You have time to read. Only now it is no longer trial and error. You know what you love most. Over the long busy years I have always wanted to go back and re-read "The Rubriyat of Omar Khayyam", as translated by Edward FitzGerald. It is one of the few literary works in history where the translation is better than the original.

Recently, this one verse has been haunting me:

"Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,

Whether the cup with sweet or bitter run,

The wine of life helps oozing, drop by drop.

The leaves of life keep falling, one by one."

How true that is!

And the short stories of O. Henry! I was fascinated by them when I was in high school. His first book was called "The Four Hundred," because at that time the population of New York City was four hundred. He believed that every person in the city was a dramatic story, a masterpiece, if you could portray his soul as it really was.

I was captivated by "The Gift of the Magi" — the story of the poor young wife in a New York tenement house who sold her hair to buy a Christmas present for her husband. The present she bought was a silver fob for his watch, which was his family heirloom. And the young husband sold the watch to buy her Christmas present - combs for her hair.

O. Henry’s ending was: "To the wise of this world let it be said that of all those who give gifts, they are the wisest. Of all those who give and receive gifts they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the Magi!"

It was only when I became a Jesuit that I realized what he meant. That husband and wife were giving themselves to each other. O. Henry presented it better than any spiritual book that I have ever seem.

So, now, when the wine of life is oozing, drop by drop, and when the leaves of life keep falling, one by one, I want to absorb the beauty of the world around me. I want to drink in the sanctity of the people God sends to me; I want to hear the voice of God in music, and in those around me; and I want to savor the wisdom of the great artists who lived before me.

This is the gift that God gives to the senior citizen – reflection on the amazing beauty of His World.

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