My father loved to say, “Pass it on.” I have an image of him at his retirement saying it to an employee of his who, weeping, was thanking him for being a great employer. There is more here than some miscellaneous nice attitude. Thomas Aquinas suggests this is a key feature of God’s plan for human life and a powerful revelation of the nature of God himself.
“The divine plan…is that what one receives from God should be shared with others.”
This sounds simple—and of course in a sense it is—but upon closer consideration we find something at once astoundingly beautiful and deeply challenging. Any good I discover in my own life calls for and indeed demands to be shared with others. But why is this so? This raises difficulties. Is the gift not truly for me? Is what I receive not really mine? A child told that he must share his candy can wonder whether the candy is really his.
Bonum diffusivum sui est. The good is self-diffusive. Put otherwise, at its very core, being is generous. And so the more perfect a thing is—or the more a thing is fully itself—the more generous it is, the more it shares its goodness.
What sounds abstract could not be more concrete, as in the gentle touch of a mother, or the firm guidance of a father. Indeed, nothing in the material world more reveals this great reality than a well-lived human life in its many facets.
For us creatures, being good always means passing on the gifts we have received. What is fatherhood but a passing on of manhood? And behold, if fatherhood is itself the fulfilment of manhood, then here we see that manhood only becomes itself through ‘passing it on!’ And of course in a mysterious and wonderful way, fatherhood also generates womanhood in daughters, and motherhood generates both womanhood in daughters and manhood in sons! No one could have made up such a thing.
God’s plan is always better than we have realized. Everything that comes to us—including that which comes only through our own intentional cultivation (of seeds planted by others!)—has an inner dynamism calling for its fuller flowering through our sharing it.
Have I some bodily strength or talent? Has meditation and study brought some insight, great or small? Do I have some material wealth? Do I have practical know-how born of experience? Has suffering brought expansion of my heart, depth of soul, or some vision to my eyes? Then now I must discern how I can share this with others.
“Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and god-like reason To fust in us unused.” Thus Shakespeare in Hamlet. What God has given should not fust in us unused. This is not a call to hyper-activism; again, just how we share is a matter for discernment. But it is a call to make ‘passing it on’ a root theme, and so an ongoing choice, in our life.
Rather than seeing God as saying to us, “Hey, do you think I meant that gift just for you?”, I think rather it is something like this: “My desire is to share myself with you; and I give myself in many and varied ways. Given who and what I am, your reception of my gifts is only fulfilled when you become truly like me, by giving of yourself to others. In this, we share one life together.”
So ‘pass it on’ is more than a catch phrase. It is a way of life we can choose. It is how we enact what we have received, how we become what we are called to be, in the all-so-ordinary paths of daily life. ~ ~ ~
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Thanks
Very welcome, David.
Thank you, for these counsels you put forth here. The gift of oneself to another, as God ordains it and in our continual discernment of the Holy Spirit’s guidance, certainly continues that gift of relationship that you wrote about recently. To share what I am, what I have been given, is to be vulnerable, as it implicates my life into the life of another… for their true good … and always, the gift may not be received as one intended or hoped it would be. To become vulnerable to another’s welcoming it, or perhaps refusing it, or misusing it even, this is hard. It is an imitation of Christ when done with love for the sake of God and the true Good of my neighbor.
Thanks for sharing. Also we were blessed to have met the. Vanderwoude family through CCl. We were also a teaching couple like them. And their witness and joy with regard to their son was a shining light when our seventh child was born with Down Syndrome. Joseph was our guiding star. She is now 26 years old and a GiFT to all of us. Not in some spectacular way- just is her simple way!