With Christmas nearly here, a reader asks Matt what is the best gift he ever received and the best gift he ever gave—not limited to Christmas but in life in general.

Matt responds:

The best gift I ever received...  That’s a difficult if not impossible question to answer, because any gift that’s given is usually given with love and acknowledgement that we are two people trying to say something through a physical handing-over of one thing to another.

The intrinsic value really has nothing to do with it...

At one point, I helped a Roman Catholic nun with her airfare to go to China, and she gave me a poster to thank me.  It was her most prized possession.  I didn’t want to accept it, but she insisted, and I felt that it would be unkind of me not to accept it.

It seemed that it was the greatest gift she could give me for enabling her to fulfill her dream.  So that poster might have been one of the greatest gifts I ever received.

As far as giving a gift...  Awhile back, when I became a president of the Papal Knights, my wife gave me a very wonderful ring that was encrusted with diamonds, to commemorate the occasion.  I wore it with great pride.

One day a humble but brilliant speaker who was a monsignor addressed our group about the problems he was encountering throughout the world.  It really touched my soul.

Being the president of the group, I got up to say goodbye to him and thank him for coming.

Impulsively I took my ring off and pressed it into his hands and said, “Take this, sell it, and get whatever you can get for it to help with your cause.”

When I think back on that, I recall the same feeling I had when I met Mother Theresa and thought about giving her the big gold watch I was wearing, but didn’t.  So maybe I gave the monsignor the ring for my own selfish reasons.  Or maybe not.

I’m glad I did it, and I’m sure it did a lot more good in his hands than it would on my finger, with me being Mister Big running around with a big ring like Astor’s pet horse.

Thanks for the question,
Matt