LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
Investors in Wisdom
The Brazilian writer Augusto Cury, in his book "The Master of Masters", states that human sufferings are an opportunity given by God for us to invest in wisdom.
Cury states that Christ sought that his disciples become great investors in wisdom, so he took every opportunity to teach them to grow in the midst of human limitations and frailties. He sought to open their intellectual horizons so that they could see suffering in a different light.
For Christ, the pains of existence were to be used to polish the edges of the personality. Human beings easily learn to struggle with their successes and gains, but have great difficulty in learning to struggle with their failures and losses. We live in societies that deny the pains of existence and overemphasize the pursuit of success. Anyone learns to struggle well with the springs of life, but only the wise learn to live with dignity in the existential winters.
"Everyone praises spring and waits anxiously for it", says Curry, "because they think flowers emerge at that time of year. In reality, flowers emerge in winter, albeit still clandestinely, and manifest themselves in spring. The water shortage, cold and low luminosity of winter punish the plants, leading them to produce metabolically the flowers that will open in spring ... The chaos of winter is responsible for the flowers of spring".
"All of us like to live the springs of life, to live a life with pleasure, with meaning, without tedium, without turbulence, in which dreams become reality and success knocks at our door. However, there is not a single human being who does not go through existential winters ... People who go through existential pains and overcome them with dignity are more beautiful and interesting inside. Those who went through the chaos of depression, panic syndrome or other psychic illnesses, and overcame them, become richer, more beautiful and wiser. Wisdom makes people more attractive even if time furrows the skin and imprints the marks of old age".
"Christ's disciples learned, little by little, to struggle with maturity with their feelings of guilt, their mistakes, their difficulties; to walk with dignity through their existential winters. They understood that their Master did not demand that they be super-men, that they not fail, that they not go through difficulties or have moments of doubt, but that they learn to be faithful to their own conscience, that they put themselves as apprentices before life and gradually transform themselves".