When I was in Medjugorje several years ago, on a visit to Tikhalina, a priest told us an anecdote that I often remember.
He spoke of how during a drought, a group of people began to pray for the rain they so desperately needed. One day after the prayer, they set out to go somewhere. There was a boy in the group who, before leaving, took an umbrella. Surprised, they asked him where he was going with it, since there was not a single cloud in the sky. Surprised by the question and, with the innocence and simplicity typical of this stage of life, the boy answered that he was taking his umbrella because it was certain to rain. Hadn’t they asked the Lord for it? Therefore, in order not to get wet it was logical that he took it.
What great faith. It reminds me a lot of the story of the centurion and the woman with the hemorrhage in the Gospel.
For me, 2025 has begun in a bittersweet way. One of the things that mark the passage to mature adulthood – as is my case – is that around you, the sad news of great people who are leaving this world begins to be quite present.
Sometimes, you don’t even know them, but from praying so much for them and their healing, they are already part of you, as is the case of the priest D. Ignacio Belzunce. Other times, however, the pain becomes more acute, since the departure is of a person you love and who has been or is important in your life. This is the case of my little sister from Emmaus, Martha.
In these first days of January, gratitude for my life, for who I am and for everything I have – which is a lot – is finely mixed with sadness and even incomprehension in the face of the suffering and death of people who, by age, should not have left.
The illusion and hope for the path that opens before me – 360 days ahead – is confronted with the reality of the fragility and vulnerability of the human person.
That is why I have asked the Three Wise Men this year for three things, and not material things. Normally, my letter is quite long, but another sign that you are getting older is that you see the amount of things that you have left over because they are superfluous and inconsistent and how, without wanting to, you can be trying to fill your life with that which will never do so.
When you grow up, if you are not absorbed by what is called worldliness, you realize what is really important. And the essential and deeply vital things are not measured or weighed in meters or kilos, nor are they even quantifiable in money.
And when you leave here, what you can only take with you and leave with your loved ones is what you have given and given to others. What you have shared with yourself. What you have loved. There is your mark. In the smallness of your reality. In the ordinary, that becomes extraordinary if it has the ingredient of self-giving.
These days, reading testimonies from many people who knew D. Ignacio and letting everything I have lived with Marta these years pass through my heart again, I experience once again this great truth that we often read on social networks in the form of self-help posts, but which is life itself. Living the present and each moment, as what it is, unique. Living savoring life. Living being and giving testimony of a Love that can do everything.
That is why, this year, in my letter to the Three Wise Men, I have asked for: the faith of the boy with the umbrella, so that, despite and no matter what happens, I do not forget who I am and where I am going. To live with the simplicity of a child and let myself be enveloped by wonder at the dawn of each day. My dear Marta, despite her illness, lived each day like this, with a strong confidence that everything is for the best, even if we are not able to understand it.
I have also asked for a large dose of joy. The kind that does not depend on whether things are going better or worse. The kind that comes from deep within the person because they know that no matter what happens, God is always there. If you believe this with the confidence of the boy with the umbrella, isn’t it true that it is something to be happy about? Life is a precious gift, but that does not take away from the hardness of living it. Faith is not a magic potion that envelops you in idealism or in a “silly” or unrealistic optimism. It does not keep you away from pain and suffering, but opens you up to a hope for the future, which becomes a rock on which to base your life and withstand the blows of the world
And, finally, I have asked my dear Melchor, Gaspar and Baltasar to help me to be able to start over every day. To not live resigned, nor lethargic, nor with my gaze fixed on my navel. May I be a little like my friend Marta, D. Ignacio and so many others who, with their example, help me to recalculate the route.
As the Kings are wise, I am sure that they will know what I need to achieve this goal. So I leave it to them.
I hope and wish that this year the Kings have brought to you who read me and to me, many of those things that, as my friend Iñigo says, do not weigh much, but leave a huge mark.
