When we
are young, most of us have it easy. We have a roof over our heads, food in the
refrigerator, and a nice group of friends…oh how I would love for life to stay
that sweet and easy. During that time in life, it is easy to be filled with
great joy, knowing that everything you need and more is already provided for
you…but life isn’t going to stay that way.
Imagine you are a middle-aged father/mother
with a teenage daughter who happens to be out with a new boyfriend…your
daughter has a strict curfew of 11:00pm and if she is going to be out later,
she will text you…the clock strikes 11:40pm with no text or call from your
daughter. It’s not that you don’t want your daughter out having fun with her
friends, it’s just that you love her so much that you can’t help but worry when
she’s out passed curfew without notice…you worry so much that you can’t sleep.
Your daughter is running around town with her new boyfriend doing
God-knows-what…your mind is too overcome with concern for your daughter to care
about anything else. This is going to happen to you as a parent. What happened to that easy life? See the key
is to find a way to remain joy-filled and also become a man/woman totally in
love.
Blessed
John Paul II (JPII) is famous for being a man completely and totally in love,
but people often forget about his early life. JPII lost his mother and brother
at a very early age; he lived alone with his dad. According to JPII he was an
amazing father, humble, holy, and everything a boy could ask for. They were
closer than most of us can even imagine. But one day, when JPII returned from
work, he found his father dead in bed. And at that moment, Blessed John Paul II
writes in his memoirs, “I have never felt so abandoned.” He was alone. He had
no one. The only thing he had at that point was his love for God. Instead of
turning his back on God, he used this suffering to grow in love, and to take
note of the suffering around him. It is that love and concern for his suffering
brothers and sisters that gave him the courage to enter the “underground”
seminary and become a priest. The world also witnessed first-hand the suffering
that JPII endured later in life…but, contrary to, what most men and women would
have done, he showed us that suffering could be endured with love. The world,
needless to say, was astounded by the depth of JPII’s love and dedication to
not only his fellow man, but to God.
Mother
Teresa is a wonderful example of a woman completely and totally in love. Mother
Teresa is well known to have gone out into the streets of Calcutta, India and
cared for those who were ill or dying. But when Mother Teresa picked up her
first dying person and brought him back to the House, her sisters asked her “Why
did you do that, if you knew there was nothing that could have been done to
save that man’s life? Why didn’t you just leave him be?” Mother responded, “I
wanted that man to know he was loved. I wanted him to experience love from
another person once more before he died…I wanted him to die knowing he was
loved.”
Mother
Teresa is charged with echoing many beautiful and challenging words. Among
those words are, “I am affected by the suffering of the world.” I wish to draw
your attention to the word “affected”. To be affected is to be moved by someone
or something. “I am affected by the suffering of the world.” Mother Teresa was
moved to love and serve those who were suffering around her. John Paul II was
also known to be affected by the suffering of this world and often (in his
early pontificate) would go out of his way to show those who are suffering,
that they are loved, just like we see today with Pope Francis (JPII still
showed love toward the suffering later in his pontificate, but we saw this
through more protection, because of the assassination attempt and growing tension).
Are you allowing yourself to be affected by the world around you? Are you
allowing yourself to be moved to love the least among you?
But how
do I come to a better understanding of human love?
As a
man discerning a call to the Priesthood, I have to remind myself that I must
fall in love with human love. I must learn to love others and allow others to
love me, in a way that does not infringe on my vocation. Let me tell you
brothers and sisters, trying to cope with the reality that I will never have a
wife and kids of my own, is probably the hardest challenge I have ever faced.
And it’s okay that it’s hard; it’s okay that I carry this cross; it’s okay that
whenever I see a young couple, my heart breaks a little bit. You know why it’s
okay? It’s okay because of you. It’s because of you that I am willing to give
up that part of my earthly life, because I love you so much that I want to be
able to give myself completely to you through my ministry.
But then how do I experience love,
thus filling myself with love? I’ll give you a hint: it cannot be done in the
mind. Love is not from the mind, it is from the heart. The moment you start to
intellectualize love…you should realize that you are missing the point. I can
read books all day about how to love and live as a chaste celibate man…but if I
do not act on that love, there is no way for me to experience it. This love
should flow from the heart. St. Paul says:
If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have
love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of
prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so
as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away
everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not
have love, I gain nothing.
I can do nothing in this life without love, because without
love there is no substance to my actions. Therefore, I can proceed to claim
that if I were to take that vow of celibacy, never infringe on that promise,
but hate every second of it…it means nothing. However, if I promise to be
celibate, never infringe on that promise, and make it out of my love for YOU…it
means something. In the same way, if you go about your day, serving people, but
hate those you serve…your good deeds mean nothing. However, if you go about
your day, serving people and loving them…it means more than words can
articulate.
I find
it interesting that Jesus told his disciples to do many things, but they were
only known for one thing: ”Look at the love they have for one another.” The
disciples didn’t care about showing off the awesome powers they received from
the Holy Spirit, they cared about bringing people to the realization that they
are loved. True, they told the story of Jesus…but isn’t the Jesus Story the
story of the Father’s love for His children? Even as the disciples were led to
their deaths…they loved and blessed their persecutors. And it is key to point
out that the disciples didn’t love because they had to, they loved because they
cared.
Now, if
loving is all great and good, why is it terrifying? The answer is simple,
because love comes from the heart. The mind/intellect and the will, keeps us
drawn into ourselves, reflecting on the nature of things around us, and acting
to fulfill our own personal needs and wants. However, the heart, by its nature,
draws us out of ourselves and into a relationship with another person…if that’s
not scary, I don’t know what is.
This is
clearly exemplified in the love a man and woman share in the sacrament of
marriage. The man seeks to fulfill his wife to the best of his ability, and the
wife seeks to fulfill her husband to the best of her ability. In marriage, you
cannot act for yourself, you must always have your spouse in mind. This will
lead a man and woman to sacrifice of themselves out of love for the other. To
love is to deny one’s self for the good of another.
Perhaps
you can now see where celibacy comes into the equation. To love as a celibate
is to serve as a reminder that divine love also plays a role in earthly love.
Earthly love comes to fruition with the marital act, whereas celibate love
comes to fruition after death. Sounds promising, doesn’t it?! A celibate person
shows people, by his/her sacrifice , that there is a love that is really beyond
words (I know this is a fact, simply
because I can come up with no way to explain this love to you).
In my
mind, the next question arises, how do we deal with loneliness? Yes, the second
biggest “L” word…Loneliness. It sucks, but you have to realize that you will
feel alone at some point in your life, even if you are married. And you better darn well understand
that you will feel lonely as a celibate. However, there is an important term I
must introduce before answering the question of “loneliness”. Solitude. Solitude is good, it is not a bad
thing. In fact, it is what keeps us sane. As a celibate man or woman who has
given his/her life up in order to serve others completely, you need to have
some “alone time”. You need time to decompress, because (speaking from the
priest’s point of view) the priesthood gets very hectic. Unless you want to
blowup at your parishioners because none of them showed up to your presentation
on “Christ: Sovereign King and Brother”, you need time to remember who you are
and why you entered into the commitment of celibacy. In order to do that, of
course, what do you do? YOU PRAY! Your vocation came from God, pray to Him for
the grace and strength needed to persevere, and look to the saints for human
inspiration.
Good,
solitude is covered…now, it’s time to address the big “killer”: loneliness. How
do we cope with the fact that we will feel lonely? I could say “pray”, but then
everyone will roll their eyes at me, because who really wants to pray when they
feel alone?! But seriously, pray and go be with friends. It is important, as a
celibate man or woman to have a group of friends; I would even go as far to
say, be with a friend who has a family of their own. By being celibate, you are
a part of their family. Play with their kids, talk to the adults about life, be
present to them, and allow them to be present to you. I think that last point
is one in which the laity is gravely lacking. As families have become more and more
secularized, they have stopped inviting priests over for dinner, or just to spend some
time together. The priest today, for most people, seems to be the man we see on
Sunday, and that’s it. We forget that our parish priest is part of our family
too. My family is guilty of this as well. In my lifetime, we have had a priest
in our house, at most, three times. And according to my last pastor, that seems
to be the trend nowadays (at least in urban parishes). How sad is that?!
Let me
break that last paragraph down for you, because of my rant on the
secularization of families. In order to cope with loneliness, you must pray and
allow others (particularly your spiritual family) to be present to you. But
most importantly (not mentioned in the above paragraph), meditate on the fact
that we ARE loved. Think about that. You are loved. Let me say that again, YOU
are loved. Allow that love to flow through you and into everyone you meet
throughout the course of your day.
In
closing I would like to propose three questions, do you know that you are
loved? Do you allow yourself to be filled with that love? Do you serve others
out of that love? Because if you answer "no" to one of these questions, stop and reevaluate what
you are doing with your life.
