Giving Race before Christmas Blogmas#21

 Before Christmas, New Year, weddings, confirmations, birthdays and anniversaries, there is usually a real gift-giving competition in families. But how can we link the words "competition" and "giving"? Since he gave me this and that last year, I have to give him something of equal value. She certainly wants this (she even let me know that her birthday is coming up) and I will have to reach into my pocket. ... So the rush becomes a race.

A gift is always a material good. Sometimes we don't even realise what the point of giving is when we say, "We have given him a gift worth so many euros." If we see the gift as something material, then the gift-giving becomes something material too. When I consider, in giving, that someone has given me something and I am obliged to give them something, this introduces commercial methods into giving.

Jesus stood outside the temple treasury and watched the people giving to God. This was an opportunity for all to show their appreciation of money, and at the same time to show their adherence to the temple. In this display of different gifts, in this contest of giving, Jesus praised the woman who threw in the least of all, she was a widow and she threw in everything she had. A gift is a sign. It is the visible expression of what we express with the gift. With a gift we want to express affection, love and attention. But nothing depends on the material value of the gift, as long as the gift really expresses these elements. People of modest means would never be able to adequately express their great love with the sign of a gift. But where there is a possibility that the gift is also materially worth something, it is only an expression of the generosity of the giver. What is decisive is the feeling and emotion that is imprinted in the gift. The gift is the heart as a visible sign.

The gift contains different feelings, how many tears and curses accompany this race in giving, because sometimes, for various reasons and perhaps because of environmental pressure, it is necessary to give beyond all possibilities and reason.

Through beauty, man should express himself in the gift; anyone can do this, even the poorest. Beauty can exist in the humble and not only in the precious. Thus the accent shifts from an overemphasis on the material value of the gift to beauty.

To give you an example ... I received a Christmas card from a large family who are struggling to get through life, made with beautiful letters on a silver plate. It came off. I saw that it was a yoghurt lid. On the back, children's hands had made a greeting card. It was the most beautiful one.

A donation in its original form. We still give flowers, but we also compare: I bought her a bouquet for so much and so little. We gave him a wreath on his grave, which cost so and so much.

 How much we enjoyed the gift of an apple or a handful of prunes when we were children. I will never forget how my mother always gave me an apple when I left the house or came home. The mother of a wealthy neighbour would often slip an apple into my hand when I was still a teacher. I felt the warmth of the gift.

The medicinal plants given to me by my friends from the island could not be separated from the hands that picked them and gave them to me. When I brew my tea, I can smell the soul, heart and affection that has been imprinted in the scent of these island plants. I, too, know how to bow a twig from my stem and a leaf from my path; I am happy to have breathed myself into them.

He who gives of himself can give the most. The gift is the sign; the gift is the heart in the sign. 

8 December - Immaculate Conception of Mary. This feast is always in Advent.

The feast was first spread by the Benedictines, and in the Middle Ages by the Franciscan friars. Pope Sixtus IV, formerly a Friar Minor, introduced it into the Roman calendar in 1476, but the religious truth was not yet defined at that time (dogma only in 1854).

Meditations - Dr. Primož Krečič ("Mary - beautiful because she loves")

A friend of mine, who often helps me, helped me to put this together. 

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