It’s Because God is Generous
By Father Raphael Arteaga, O.P.

As I have prayed and reflected on why God has called me to be a Dominican priest, I think there is only one explanation: it’s because God is generous.

It’s because God is generous that not only did He know me from all eternity, He chose to give me life, to form me in my mother’s womb, to love me into existence at a particular time and in a particular place.

It’s because God is generous that I exist at every moment from conception unto eternity.

It’s because God is generous that I was born into a Catholic family.

It’s because God is generous that His Church welcomed me as an infant into her embrace.

It’s because God is generous that His Church renounced sin and professed faith on my behalf.

It’s because God is generous that He sent His Spirit to unseal for His Church the font of baptism by whose waters I died to sin and rose to new life in Christ.

It’s because God is generous that when I have sinned, when I have not lived according to the grace of my baptism, Christ’s mercy sought me out and restored me to friendship by the confession of my sins.

It’s because God is generous that He, by His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, hidden under the veil of bread and wine, heals and unites my flesh and spirit to His.

It’s because God is generous that even when I had received the fullness of His Spirit’s gifts in baptism, He sealed me with the oil of gladness to become a soldier and witness of His love.

It’s because God is generous that He called and consecrated me through the religious profession of vows so as to follow Him more closely and live with Him more deeply.

It’s because God is generous that He configured me to Christ Who did not come to be served but to serve and to become a ransom for many.

It’s because God is supremely generous that He configures men, sinful and unworthy as we are, to Christ the High Priest to offer the one perfect sacrifice of Christ to the Eternal Father, to restore life by the forgiveness of sins, and to form the mystical body through the preaching and personal living of the Word of Life.

If one searches for the reason as to why God bestows upon us the gifts of both our natural and supernatural life, I think the only answer that suffices is that it is because God is generous.

God gives gifts freely, lavishly, and according to His own eternal designs. He is pure generosity; He is pure generosity because He is pure goodness and true goodness always seeks to share itself. If God is generous to us, then, it is because God is His own reason for His generosity. He is generous because that is simply Who He is.

If the only answer to the question, “why does God give me gifts and graces,” is because of His generosity, the only response to this generosity is gratitude. This means that we both thank God in prayer and we seek to use His gifts and graces well. True gratitude for God’s generosity draws out and strengthens our own generosity.

As I reflect on the Lord’s generosity to me, I offer Him in gratitude my life in union with the chalice of salvation. I pray that this Spirit inspired gratitude makes me a generous Dominican priest in the image of Christ, and unto life everlasting in the Father’s house.