I left Cuba when I was seven years old. I was too young to understand the magnitude of what was happening. My grandmother did a great job to prepare me for "the big adventure." I wasn't even sad to leave the few toys I owned behind because my grandmother had promised me that in Spain I would have many more toys. It was not the same for my parents. For them it was not an adventure. Imagine that everything that you own, your house, your car, your furniture, your jewelry, your clothing, your paintings... everything is taken away from you in the blink of an eye. How would you feel?
I totally understand now how my parents must have felt. After working so hard for years to pay off my house, if someone came knocking on my door to tell me that my house doesn't belong to me anymore, that it belongs to the government, I would be devastated. I would feel humiliated and cheated. But just like my parents and most immigrants had to leave all their possessions behind when they moved to a new country, it will be the same for all of us when we depart from this place we call home. We came into this world with nothing and we will leave with nothing.
God has been drilling this message into my heart in the past few weeks. I went to mass last Thursday morning and Father Bijou Vells, one of the priests at St Louis, said that "if we think of everything we possess as a loan, we would not have any trouble letting go of it." He said that "we need to live with a spirit of poverty," to the point that if we have to give away everything that we own, we will be fine because we know that our treasures are not here on earth, our treasures are waiting for us in heaven. Owning things is not a bad thing in itself. The problem is when we become so attached to our possessions that we can't imagine life without them. But if we use everything we own to glorify God, knowing that all our blessings come from Him, then we can fully enjoy what we have.
Father Bijou also told us that when we take an item to a priest for a blessing, that item is set aside for a holy purpose. If we ask a priest to come bless our homes, we must set aside our homes for a holy purpose. We must use our homes to worship the Lord from the moment we wake up until we close our eyes at night. And when we go to mass and we are blessed by the priest, we are set aside for a holy purpose. We have an obligation to go out into the world and spread the blessing we have received to others.
Our whole purpose on this earth should be to serve and glorify God with a spirit of poverty and humility. Everything we own should be used to serve and glorify God. And all our talents should be placed at God's service.
As we prepare to begin the Lenten journey in just one week, let us meditate on how attached we are to the things we own. Can we leave everything behind and follow Jesus if He asks us? Or like the rich young man, will we have a hard time detaching ourselves from our possessions?
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