Happy Birthday

Its cinco de Mayo which just happens to be my birthday.  Did you know that some Asian countries start counting your age as soon as you are born, a baby starts at 1 rather than waiting a year.  Not that this is important but it is an interesting fact none-the-less.

So what's  in a birthday, who is it really about.  Birthdays are nice because its the one day a year that people take the time to focus on you.  It makes you feel part of a bigger picture, but is it the right picture.  Is the day really about us, well yes, maybe.

Our birth and our life was a gift to our parents and a gift to us.  Our birthdays should really be celebrations of where we came from and how we got here. Our parents should be celebrated and most especially our God.  Life is not always what you expect and it is rarely easy, but it is a gift and an incredible one at that!  What we do what that gift determines how and who celebrate the day with us.  Each year we make new friends, lose old ones, and kindle lost ones.  Our birthdays are signposts of what our lives are about, we can look back, and judging from how we spent our birthdays and who the cards were from, we can get a good picture of where our lives have been.

Funerals are also celebrations of life, in their own way.  I had a great aunt who died recently at the age of 94.  She outlived most of her friends and family.  We all fantasize about who will be at our funeral, Im sure she would have never guessed living so long and having such few remaining friends left.  We celebrate her life and pray that she is at peace in the next.

Saints feast days usually take place on the day they died or were martyred.  This, I think, has 2 fold reasoning.  One, to commemorate their life and to commemorate their birth, their new birth in Heaven.   Death can be such a rich symbol of life.

Take for instance the sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist at mass.  Christs suffering and death are re-presented to us in an unbloody way.  We relive his death at Calvary at each mass.  It is a difficult concept to grasp but God is full of mystery but we assent out of love for Him.  In the same way we celebrate our lives each year on our birthday, while being present in time.  Someday we will exist in eternity and hopefully our reflection on our own lives each year will lead us to a heavenly eternity.