True Greatness

This week I visited our parish office to have a couple of Masses offered. One was for a recently deceased Trappist monk, whose intercession I had sought a couple of days after his death and received a wonderful answer to prayer. The other was for a soldier from the Second World War, who was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for valour on his last mission, where he bled out from his wounds whilst covering the retreat of his men who were all saved. I am grateful to both men.

This got me thinking about where true greatness lies.

I have met quite a few men whom I would consider great. Some are prominent with extraordinary stories but most are rather obscure, known only to the few whose lives they touch directly and yet all have the same characteristics.

One chap I see regularly drives a tuk-tuk, a three-wheeled vehicle used for short trips around the city. Once a month I do a ‘big-shop’ at a supermarket and he brings me and my cargo home.  When we first met I noticed an array of photographs along the top of the windscreen, he and his wife on each end and all his children at various stages of their education in the middle. When I asked about them, his eyes lit up and I heard all their stories, from elementary to high school, even a couple are in college now.

The job is hard. Seven days a week, morning until night, a lot of competition for passengers, blistering heat in summer, torrential rain and floods in rainy season and our famous traffic and pollution. But his life; and those of any great man, is attached to a higher purpose, something bigger than himself. He loves his family. This is the fuel for the journey, to provide for them, give them all that was needed. His toothless grin reveals his joy in sacrifice and selflessness, in his service to those he has been entrusted with. It is a daily dying to himself for others.

The foundation of greatness is sacrificial love, and by day and by decade the commitment is tested and the grit of character is developed in perseverance with grace to lubricate the process.

Greatness is not inaccessible, nor is it a special gift to a few extraordinary souls, it’s to choose to serve in love and keep going however intense or dull the life may be, until the end be it long or short.