Don't Forget. . .The Gift!

Last Sunday's newspaper brought a"Family Circus" cartoon by Bil Keane that is a "keeper." The strip shows a mother and three little ones walking through a shopping mall, passing displays successively labeled "Don't forget wrapping paper," "Don't forget tree lights," and "Don't forget candy." The last frame shows the mom and kids, having left the mall, walking past a church with a creche scene in its front yard, and a large sign next to the creche saying simply, "Don't Forget!"

Fra Giovanni Giocondo, the 16th-century Franciscan friar whose work I introduced in this blog this past July, wrote a lovely meditation on "Gift" in 1513. It came to my attention first as a Christmas card sent to me by a friend many years ago, and certainly is suitable during this season of gifts, joy . . . and sometimes sadness. I'd like to reproduce it here:

"The gloom of the world is but a shadow, behind it, yet within reach is joy, there is radiance and glory in the darkness could we but see, and to see we have only to look, I beseech you to look.

"Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard, remove the covering and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of Love, by Wisdom, with power.

"Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel's hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, the angel's hand is there, the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing Presence. Our joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They too conceal diviner gifts.

"And so at this time I greet you, not quite as the world sends greetings but with profound esteem and the prayer that for you, now and forever, the day breaks and shadows flee away."

That is my prayer, too, for the world and for each one who reads this. Never forget Love's Gift of Itself, whether in the form of a magnificent story still celebrated today, or beyond all form.