Our lives are brimming with opportunities for learning new things. Like a perfect “learning machine,” newborns test their surroundings with insatiable curiosity and thirst, acquiring new knowledge, growing, and progressing. We provide them with constant encouragement and offer all the human knowledge and wisdom we have to help them develop self-discernment and build a solid foundation for realizing their future.
We understand that not all tests and lessons are beneficial or useful. Not every piece of knowledge imparts wisdom or offers opportunities for positive growth. How do we acquire the ability to discern what is good and appropriate? Physical pain and suffering undoubtedly aid us in avoiding harmful and dangerous situations.
However, we only wish that every aspect of our lives were recognizable as perilous and dangerous through pain.
In common usage, the term “test” refers to attempting something to gauge our thoughts and opinions about it. It involves examining, evaluating, and assessing something for its usefulness in our plans. Additionally, it involves considering whether it aligns with our understanding of good and whether it is beneficial or valuable in achieving our goals. Is this approach the appropriate way to pursue the good in our lives? Should we experiment with various options until we discover the fruit of immortality? Shouldn’t we cultivate and thrive in the environment of grace and wisdom, safeguarding our environment from harmful ideologies, perspectives, and desires?
The Church, like a heavenly garden, offers us God’s abundant grace and the fertile soil of His abundant mercy.
Here, we can firmly plant our roots and nourish ourselves with His wisdom and the beauty of His divine graces.
As true images of God, all human beings, regardless of their knowledge, wealth, cultivation, or roughness, possess the same inherent power to choose the good. However, they also have the freedom to choose evil. This freedom of choice is an awe-inspiring and wondrous power that demands our solemn commitment to nurture and cultivate it. We must strive until we arrive at a point where we choose almost instinctively the good and refrain from evil.
The Church serves as a new school where we can acquire valuable life lessons and receive training to attain a more skillful ability to make righteous choices. It is here that we discover the divine essence of God, the source of all goodness and perfect gifts.
The feast of the nativity of the Blessed Mother of God presents an opportune moment for contemplation. Let us enter through these sacred doors, this new school, and acquire the knowledge of what is virtuous. Let us understand that this precious gem is not a material good, but the very essence of God, the ultimate source of happiness and the greatest Good.
Under the loving care of our heavenly Mother, may we taste this ultimate Good, and every other good thing in life will be bestowed upon us in abundance.
