“Father, they are your gift to me.” // John 17: 24 (From Gospel for the Memorial of St. Bernard)

I quickly opened the envelope addressed with my name and began reading the contents of the letter right there in the chapel. I was going to enter a Carmelite Monastery very soon and any amount of spiritual encouragement was like balm to my soul. This friend shared a quote that a priest mentioned in a homily: “The Lord gives back to us the gift of ourselves.” I only realized afterwards, while listening to the audio version of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux’s writings while in the convent—the Saint whom the Church honors today—that this quote was based on his writings. 

In Chapter Five of his work On Loving God, he writes, “In the first creation He gave me myself; but in His new creation He gave me Himself, and by that gift restored to me the self that I had lost” (source). Before entering the convent I thought I knew who I was, that I had so much to give, that I had found what I was looking for. However, upon entering the enclosure of Carmel, all of my securities fell to the ground and only the Lord could restore what had been shattered in me: my dreams, my longings, myself. During that year in the convent, the Lord remade me and gave me back to myself. 

The Father takes us and remakes us through the merits of His Son, restoring to us our giftedness, our dignity, the truth of who we are. Our identity as gift—as one meant to be given and received in love—takes on an even deeper meaning when we understand that Christ not only gained this for us through His sacrifice on the Cross, but that He did this as the Father’s will. The Father wanted to give us as a gift to the Son, but first gave the Son as a gift to us. And in the beautiful mystery and exchange of love that is the Trinity, Christ wants to give us right back as gifts to the Father.

Sister, you and I were created on purpose, with care, as gifts to be treasured.