Holy Week: loving life as Jesus does…

March 23, 2016 techdecisions

-by Nic Davidson and his wife joined the Church in ’08 after growing up in the Assemblies of God.

“I love life.

I enjoy being alive. I am not oblivious to the great gifts that God and others have given me. At least once a day, I get a small wave of giddiness at being allowed to receive the next breath or do some mundane act. So, I do love life.

I just wish I loved it more.

I rarely appreciate the magnitude of existing. I have so forgotten what a singular privilege it is to have a heartbeat that I let my heart settle. I settle down, like silt. I settle for less–less than I was made for. I settle scores–scores and scores of wrongdoings. I receive 23,000 breaths a day, all gifts, all miracles of biology, physics, and spirit, and what do I do with them? Occasionally, something true, good, and beautiful, but most often, something drab, gray, and short-tempered, aimed at the ones I’m supposed to love.

I love others.

I love my family, of course, and I also love to encounter a new face on a plane as we’re forced to cram our cramped thighs down next to each other for two hours. I often can’t help but grin like a fool at a random passerby, just because I catch a glimpse of his or her grandeur. So, I do love others.

I just wish I loved them more.

I do love them enough to care about the wrongs and ills that plague them–abortion, euthanasia, war, sex slavery, porn, divorce, refugees, and abuse; but I want to love them more, enough to care about their taxes, best friends, worst enemies, “likes,” and “unfriends.” I want to care about the gas station attendant more than I care about getting home to relax or moving on to the next thing.

I love this point in my life.

I am thankful for the endless times God’s hand–sometimes seen, sometimes unseen–has slalomed me through my days in order to bring me to this moment, complete with a family that loves me and a job that energizes me. I can’t think of any other time in my life that I would want to trade out for this one. So, I do love my “now”.

I just wish I loved it more.

I wish I were sublimely glad that I’m here on this planet, so my weeks and years could avoid boiling down to wishing I were elsewhere. I forget how to receive my minutes as a gift, so I feel cheated and wounded when someone takes an extra second of “my” time. I forget how to give, so everything feels like taking.

All said and done, I wish I were more like Christ. I wish I could encounter each person with the firm care that He does. Jesus, our Lover and our Leader, experienced the entire spectrum of human emotion, intellect, and will, and throughout each second, He loved. Every time He reprimanded someone or pushed their table over or was angry, He was, with each breath and each action, still deeply and eternally in love with that soul, still as compassionate as the times He healed, encouraged, and brought back to life.

I want to love and live like that.

I want to get angry at people in the right way, because I am, first, in love with them like Christ is in love with them. I want to see that they are good beings, so that I can truly look out for their well-being. I want to see the light of God within them to the point that I almost have to squint.

I want to love life so much that I’m willing to die.

I want to hold human existence in high enough esteem that I see the beauty and power in setting it down as a gift for others. I don’t want to be so busy saying “this is mine” that I miss out on the joy in saying “I got this for you.” I want to see and believe that loving someone else will always entail carrying them, but that it’s less like the weight of an unwanted hitchhiker and much and much more like giving a piggyback ride to a child or the weight of a spouse in the marriage bed.

In fact, the weight of human life is always, always good, even if it means nails, thorns, and tombs. Why? Because the pain brings redemption, the wounds turn to scars, and the tomb remains empty!

So, maybe I don’t love enough.

I don’t love the fact that life exists. I don’t love myself or others the way I was made to. I might not, at this moment, be climbing the heights of love that I was created for, but I do know that it was His love that brought me safe thus-far and that if He begins something, He’s faithful to complete it. In fact, that’s the beautiful message of this gospel of life (evangelium vitae)–that our seemingly feeble attempts at love, our lackluster stutter steps not only make Him proud, but that His strength is most evident in my weakness.

I may run slowly, but it will always be His mercy that finishes the race.”

Love, and loving life! His will be done! His Kingdom come!
Matthew

Summa Catechetica, "Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam." – St Anselm, "“Si comprehendus, non est Deus.” -St Augustine, "Let your religion be less of a theory, and more of a love affair." -G.K. Chesterton, “When we pray we speak to God; but when we read, God speaks to us.” -St Jerome, "As the reading of bad books fills the mind with worldly and poisonous sentiments; so, on the other hand, the reading of pious works fills the soul with holy thoughts and good desires." -St. Alphonsus Liguori, "And above all, be on your guard not to want to get anything done by force, because God has given free will to everyone and wants to force no one, but only proposes, invites and counsels." –St. Angela Merici, “Yet such are the pity and compassion of this Lord of ours, so desirous is He that we should seek Him and enjoy His company, that in one way or another He never ceases calling us to Him . . . God here speaks to souls through words uttered by pious people, by sermons or good books, and in many other such ways.” —St. Teresa of Avila, "I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men and women who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, and who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it. I want an intelligent, well-instructed laity… I wish you to enlarge your knowledge, to cultivate your reason, to get an insight into the relation of truth to truth, to learn to view things as they are, to understand how faith and reason stand to each other, what are the bases and principles of Catholicism, and where lie the main inconsistences and absurdities of the Protestant theory.” (St. John Henry Newman, “Duties of Catholics Towards the Protestant View,” Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England), "We cannot always have access to a spiritual Father for counsel in our actions and in our doubts, but reading will abundantly supply his place by giving us directions to escape the illusions of the devil and of our own self-love, and at the same time to submit to the divine will.” —St. Alphonsus Ligouri, "The harm that comes to souls from the lack of reading holy books makes me shudder . . . What power spiritual reading has to lead to a change of course, and to make even worldly people enter into the way of perfection." –St. Padre Pio, "Screens may grab our attention, but books change our lives!" – Word on Fire, "Reading has made many saints!" -St Josemaría Escrivá, "Do you pray? You speak to the Bridegroom. Do you read? He speaks to you." —St. Jerome, from his Letter 22 to Eustochium, "Encounter, not confrontation; attraction, not promotion; dialogue, not debate." -cf Pope Francis, "God here speaks to souls through…good books“ – St Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle, "You will not see anyone who is really striving after his advancement who is not given to spiritual reading. And as to him who neglects it, the fact will soon be observed by his progress.” -St Athanasius, "To convert someone, go and take them by the hand and guide them." -St Thomas Aquinas, OP. 1 saint ruins ALL the cynicism in Hell & on Earth. “When we pray we talk to God; when we read God talks to us…All spiritual growth comes from reading and reflection.” -St Isidore of Seville, “Also in some meditations today I earnestly asked our Lord to watch over my compositions that they might do me no harm through the enmity or imprudence of any man or my own; that He would have them as His own and employ or not employ them as He should see fit. And this I believe is heard.” -GM Hopkins, SJ, "Only God knows the good that can come about by reading one good Catholic book." — St. John Bosco, "Why don't you try explaining it to them?" – cf St Peter Canisius, SJ, Doctor of the Church, Doctor of the Catechism, "Already I was coming to appreciate that often apologetics consists of offering theological eye glasses of varying prescriptions to an inquirer. Only one prescription will give him clear sight; all the others will give him at best indistinct sight. What you want him to see—some particular truth of the Faith—will remain fuzzy to him until you come across theological eye glasses that precisely compensate for his particular defect of vision." -Karl Keating, "The more perfectly we know God, the more perfectly we love Him." -St Thomas Aquinas, OP, ST, I-II,67,6 ad 3, “But always when I was without a book, my soul would at once become disturbed, and my thoughts wandered." —St. Teresa of Avila, "Let those who think I have said too little and those who think I have said too much, forgive me; and let those who think I have said just enough thank God with me." –St. Augustine, "Without good books and spiritual reading, it will be morally impossible to save our souls." —St. Alphonsus Liguori "Never read books you aren't sure about. . . even supposing that these bad books are very well written from a literary point of view. Let me ask you this: Would you drink something you knew was poisoned just because it was offered to you in a golden cup?" -St. John Bosco " To teach in order to lead others to faith is the task of every preacher and of each believer." —St. Thomas Aquinas, OP. "Prayer purifies us, reading instructs us. Both are good when both are possible. Otherwise, prayer is better than reading." –St. Isidore of Seville “The aid of spiritual books is for you a necessity.… You, who are in the midst of battle, must protect yourself with the buckler of holy thoughts drawn from good books.” -St. John Chrysostom