It's a Wonderful Life

The other day—the very eve of the current year to be precise—I suggested casually to my family that we spend the evening watching It's a Wonderful Life and eating cheese because that seemed to be our New Year's Eve tradition insofar as we have one.  It was a casual suggestion I say with plenty of room for anyone to propose an alternative—though none came.

When I suggested the film, I had not the least idea how much it would speak to me.  I was neither depressed nor frustrated with my life, but rather quite the opposite: hopeful for the future and eager for some current projects in the works to come to fruition.  Still it hit home.

Somehow we all need to hear its message.  It is an integral part of our wounded human nature to question our existence in the world, to feel as if we do not belong, as if it might have been better if we had not existed, to feel that all we do brings ruin upon ourselves or others, that all our decisions are faulty, and that we are failures.  The enemy subtly weaves that web of deceit to catch us even in our most joyous moments.  Always that dark doubt lingers, undercutting the good that we might do.

Yet the truth is so powerful.  The good that we do ripples out through the world in ways that we will never understand, much like the scientific principle known as the butterfly effect.  Merely a smile might change the whole course of a stranger's life.  And when it comes to those whose lives we touch on a daily basis: think of what fruit our love for them can bring forth!

The world needs you.  For you can touch people in a way that no other can.

Of course I cannot help but think of the corollary: not only does the good we do affect others, but also the evil.  If we speak negatively of others, if we complain, if we avoid contact with others, if we speak impatiently...

Sometimes I find myself weighted down beneath the thought of what those little seemingly-insignificant deeds might do.  I feel so powerless.  I wonder if I can ever love enough to make up for all the evil that I might unwittingly have done.  How can it possibly be true that the good I do can outweigh the negative?

Yet it can.

...for charity covereth a multitude of sins.

1 Peter 4:8

Somehow, miraculously, our deeds of love can make up for a multitude of evil.  So much hope lies in that truth.  Let us choose then to step forward each day of this new year with hearts open to others, with arms reaching out to those around us, and with courage to risk loving at the expense of hurt!

Be not afraid that it may be too little.  I will leave you now with words from Saint Andre Bessette: “It is with the smallest brushes that the Artist paints the best paintings.”