This end of the year I spent a few days with my relatives in my native Sonora. The news that impressed us all is that Jorge had died, brother of my friend Armando. I was three years old. I remember Jorge with great vitality and joy. He liked to sing ranchera music and participated in several contests. He had a gift of people; with all the friends and schoolmates he was cordial, kind, friendly and funny. He was famous for his talent for telling jokes because he acted very well and could spend long periods telling one after another, for his good memory.

He stood out professionally as a civil engineer. She married a local girl and had several children. It was easy for public relations, good health, was quite athletic and everything foreshadowed a long life. But God had him prepared a relatively short life. He had an illness and soon died.

But how is it possible that he died, if he was full of vigor, strength and thrust for business and was jovial father and loving husband? his friends wondered. As the proverb says, "Man possesses his time and God his eternity."

In the cafeteria of the funeral home, I commented his brother Armando: assimilated not yet the death of Jorge. I think it's incredible. Do you remember that when we were in elementary school we often said. When I grow up, I will do such or such a thing? and now we tend to say. Do you remember that strict high school teacher with the spelling that flunked us all on a monthly exam? And do you remember this other thing...? I have the impression of having lived a dream, like a movie in quick motion.

In reality, the lives of people on earth are but a handful of days that pass vertiginously, like water between the fingers. "And when you look back, you will see the path that never again has to be stepped on", said the unforgettable poet of Castile, Antonio Machado.

The love of Christ and others, wrote Saint Paul, owes us urge, because the time is very short.

We have to learn the wisdom of knowing how to make good use of our time. How many times we do not find ourselves, in the rolling of our existence, with people who miserably lose time and who do not produce the expected professional fruits, for laziness, sloth, disorder and so many other excuses.

I think it is a good opportunity, now that a new year begins, that we take an examination, I include myself, to, and set specific purposes: How do I live the details of kindness and affection with my relatives? How do I treat my colleagues and subordinates? Do I let myself be carried away by selfishness and arrogance? How can I improve in the daily and weekly order in my professional activities? Do I do charity work for others? How is my relationship with God, cold and distant? or on the contrary, do I strive to seek it in every day? Am I sympathetic, patient and tolerant of the flaws of others?

It seems to me that with these questions, by way of some examples, they can help us to clarify those purposes so that we may well take advantage of that valuable treasure of time. At the end of the road, we will meet our Father God; But, as that friend told me, "We have to come before his presence with the well-loaded backpacks of good works".