Although I suppose you would have to be insultingly young not to have seen “It’s a Wonderful Life” at least 10 times (in the original version, in black and white or colored), and always at Christmas, I am going to allow myself to make a small synopsis, for If anyone reading this post has grown up with the misfortune of never having seen it.
In the film, the protagonist, played by James Stewart, tries to take his own life, convinced that he is not worth living after a financial setback. However, it occurs to his guardian angel, a charming old man who is about to “earn his wings,” that the best thing he can do for him is to show him what the world would have been like if he had never arrived to be born. What would have happened to his wife, his brother, or his neighbors? Thus, George Bailey (character name) discovers that the world would have been very different if he had not been born. His brother would have died in an accident on the ice when he was a child since he was not there to save him; His wife would have been a prudish and spinster librarian, and his town, Bedford Falls, would live in sadness due to the tyranny of the local magnate, who denies the inhabitants the credits that George Bailey does grant. It is a story and the image it offers is quite naive, but it manages to capture the idea: if you had not been born, the world would be worse.
With the background of the 1946 film, allow me to propose an exercise of imagination. It would be impossible to try to guess what the world would have been like without us, my proposal is simpler, imagine what your life would have been like, if you had never had faith or if you had never lived according to your faith.
Would you have gotten married? Would you have done it in the church? It is very possible, there are many people who get married in a church for aesthetic or social reasons, and they do not set foot there again until the child asks them to take “communion.” like the rest of his classmates, and they are already taking the opportunity to baptize him.
Would you have given each and every alms he has given? Would I have looked to the sky hoping for an answer when things got bad?
What would you have done, and what would you not have done, if it weren’t for having faith?
How would your life today be different from how you would live if you had never had faith?
I ask you to spend two minutes on it, you don’t need more, but spend them thinking about what a day lived apart from faith would be like.
If your answer is that your life would be radically different, that you would not have married – perhaps not to the person you did -, or that you would not have had the children you have had, or that on Sundays you would take the opportunity to have an appetizer, since you don’t “You have” to go to Mass, let me congratulate you. That means you are living according to your beliefs, that implies coherence of life.
There are those who think that perhaps it does not imply living according to a faith, but only living according to an education received, and social customs imposed in a more or less explicit way. It is possible, but I want to think that the readers of Educate with Meaning are mature enough to live according to their own decisions.
We are in the 21st century. In countries with a Judeo-Christian tradition, no one is forced to live according to religious norms. Today, thank God (literally), living the (Christian) faith is a matter of freedom and maturity, not of social impositions. If you don’t believe it, look around you.
If your answer is that there is no difference between how you live now and how you would live if you practiced your faith (I assume you have it, otherwise the proposed exercise is impossible), since, despite believing in God, you do nothing as a consequence of it. He does not go to Mass, he does not pray, he does not look to Heaven expecting some response, whenever he gives alms he does so as an exclusively social work, but he does not identify the beneficiary with Christ, etc. If he simply believes in God, but it doesn’t alter his life at all, let me congratulate him.
I am not, nor do I intend to be, sarcastic at all. I give you my most sincere congratulations. If, despite having faith, you live as if you don’t have it, I congratulate you, because that means you have a 100% chance of discovering the wonder of living according to our faith.
Having faith is like knowing how to read, it implies enormous potential, but if we never read a book, then that potential is waiting to be put into action.
I love recommending books. I love when people start reading something I’ve already enjoyed. In a way, it’s like I’m a little envious: “what luck, you’re going to enjoy this book for the first time.”
That’s why I congratulate you: because you can still discover the wonder of living according to our faith in all things. Every new action, every new gesture you make, simply because you have faith, is a new discovery that can fill us with joy.
And that’s the good thing, having faith is like knowing how to read: there is no time to read all the books that have been written, so every day we discover new ways to enjoy faith.
It is true that the sooner we begin to live according to faith, the sooner we begin to enjoy (the sooner you start reading, the more books you read). That is the importance of educating our children in the faith. Give them the opportunity to enjoy as soon as possible.
I like to remember the interview that Jesús Hermida, a famous Spanish journalist from the last century, conducted a few months before his death with Dr. Juan Antonio Vallejo Nájera. It was at that time when there were only two television channels, and, therefore, the audiences were much larger than today. That interview had such an impact that it gave rise to a book, “The Door of Hope”. Throughout it, Jesús Hermida asked the psychiatrist, who already knew that the cancer he suffered was irreversible, “What would happen if when you died you discovered that your faith, what you believe in, is false, does not exist? ”
“Nobody can take away the good time I’ve had,” responded Dr. Vallejo Nájera
That’s it!, and living according to our faith is a joy and, therefore, educating our children in lukewarmness, in “I believe, but I don’t practice”, is to deprive them of enjoyment, it is to teach them to read, but not buy them or make it easy for them to read a single book.
The best thing, since we have faith, is to teach them, how beautiful it is to believe!
