The Human Person: What a Mess!

The human person. Image of God.

Made from dust. Destined to return to dust.

Redeemed by the grace of the God who took the dust and made it His dust, raising it up to eternal life.

This is the truth. I believe it. I believe -- which is to say I know with certainty -- that this is the truth.

This certainty is a gift from God.

It is not up to me or anyone else to change the truth that He has given to the world. Nor would I want to change a single iota of the truth, because it is here that I find the mercy and the love that I need.

The human person. What a mess!

Who can understand the heart of a human person? I know, from my own experience -- from my own suffering and from the suffering of those I love -- something of the hindrances, the obstacles, the feebleness of enfleshed human intelligence and human freedom.

The opaque afflictions of the bodily person lead to the confusion and the interior realm of misperception that limit us and so often hinder our judgment. Due to various disorders we've only begun to understand, we are born with brains and nervous systems and endocrine systems and other systems that are off balance, "tilted," more or less dysfunctional in a myriad of ways.

We all enter into a world of relationships with other people who have more or less the same dysfunctions, people who also have a history of living with their problems and dealing with the struggle of trying to be together in the world. They make judgments and act freely, thereby a growing a little in love or becoming more selfish and destructive (or moving back and forth between the two). But real people think and choose inside a thick fog while carrying a lot of weight.

Intelligence and freedom are not lost, but they are often obscured (to a significant extent) because they are incarnate in a broken human frame and pass through all the afflictions of a distorted human life.

We think and act, indeed. But it is difficult.

We Catholic Christians know that at the root of this dysfunction is original sin. Jesus died to free us from the sin of Adam, and baptism frees us from original sin and all other sins. Still, the "effects" of original sin remain in us at various levels of our humanity.

We Christians engage in the struggle and the journey of life along with our non-Christian brothers and sisters, who do not yet know that they too have been redeemed by Jesus and are living within the context of the profuse, mysterious action of His grace.

If we have truly encountered Jesus, then we long for them also to see His beautiful face. With all our faults and weakness, we aspire to live in such a way that His glory shines through us. But the "results" of our witness are in His hands, and we must trust in Him because He holds the destiny of us all, of each and every human person with immeasurable and ineffable love.

Meanwhile, we all journey together in this life, and we are all broken.

Original sin darkens the intellect and weakens the will, certainly. But it also makes us sick. Physically sick. Disoriented. "Off-balance." Afflicted. Passing from generation to generation in pain. Sweating to bring forth thistles and thorns from the earth.

We all suffer from a terminal illness. We are all dying.

And we are all stunted as human beings by a subtle and diffuse distortion of perception and emotion. Most of us struggle to overcome this condition. A few stand out in extraordinary ways, as "saints" or heroes. Others live flawed but beautiful and admirable lives. A great number of us (I hope) just keep working at it, trying move forward. We make the best choices we can. We fail, we make mistakes, we acknowledge them, we take advice from others, we keep trying, we build up the good in ourselves and others.

Sometimes others can see that we've made some progress.

Sometimes, however, this stunted, "chronic and terminally ill" human condition can overcome a person even in spite of their best efforts; it can be as powerful as the acute disorientation that we recognize when a person has a great fever or a massive brain seizure. This sickness, in reality, is a kind of "brain damage" that we don't yet fully understand.

It is the crisis brought on by those diseases that we classify as "mental illness."

But often our poor feeble human frame undergoes more subtle convulsions that we don't perceive on the surface of our lives. The pain is deep down in the layers of memory, wound up with hormones and the whole emotional structure, with the nervous system and the brain and its tangled neurological arrangements, or with other more obscure aspects of our humanity that we have not discovered or about which we can only guess.

Humans get sick, grow old, and weaken. We experience this in various ways at various times in ourselves and/or in those we love. We all carry great burdens.

We are all suffering.

The road is difficult. Human freedom, nevertheless, is real. It is woven into all of this mess. The love of Jesus is also real, and it is offered to us within all of this mess.

Our lives therefore, are inescapably dramatic. Love is always possible in this life. So too is sin. We know this if we are honest with ourselves. We know when we have freely chosen to do something that is evil. The weight of our human condition may diminish the blame we deserve, but we still know that we must take responsibility for the things we do wrong.

We must examine ourselves honestly, and repent of our sins.

It is true that our myriad human afflictions can reduce (in various ways) our measure of responsibility for the evil that we do.

But nothing in our particular human condition can turn evil into good. If something is morally destructive in itself, there are many aspects of our burdened humanity that can make it less destructive for us. But there is nothing that can make it good for us.

If our misery drives us to plunge deeper into more kinds of misery, this is a sorrowful event that should evoke compassion, solidarity, and the effort to help. We deserve this solidarity, each one of us, because we are human beings!

But we cannot use our misery to justify ourselves. It doesn't work. We remain miserable. Even if the whole world told us we were happy, would it make any difference, really?

Self-justification is a project that ends in despair.

It doesn't help, however, simply to point this out. Because we all remain broken and in need of healing. We need healing.

Jesus is the gift that brings healing and hope.

Jesus heals us from our sins and begins to heal the brokenness all the way through us, to lift up our humanity, to empower our freedom, and to enable us to embrace the mysterious path of suffering for ourselves and others.

Our destiny is the glory of God, and His glory is a healed and transformed humanity in which we are brothers and sisters of Jesus forever right down to our bones and nerves and tissues, right down to the delicate and exquisite balance of all our parts, to the depths of spirit and mind and heart and flesh and blood.

The human person: alive and whole forever. Filled up and flowing out with joy.

The hope for every human person is Him. God wants each and every human person to be beautiful and whole forever, and He has promised to bring us to this integral fulfillment when we trust in His Son Jesus.

This is the hope that enables us to taste even now the promise of fulfillment. This is the hope that generates the compassion which we are called to have for one another, the interest in life, the building up of the good in this world, the struggle to move forward without being crushed by our own burdens.

In all things, this is our hope.

Without Him, We Labor in Vain

"Unless the Lord builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the Lord guards the city,
the guard keeps watch in vain.
It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
when He pours gifts on His beloved while they slumber."

~Psalm 127:1-2

A Force of Nature

What I sound like to my kids.

In the past four years I have written and written, here on this blog and on other media platforms. And though I'm not teaching in the classroom, I am always ready to talk about things that interest me and others, i.e. to have a conversation. I'm a pretty good listener (over the years I've become much better at really listening). But words always seem to be at hand, and if others are interested and listening I will talk. I will talk and talk and talk long beyond exhaustion.

I have an implacable desire to express myself, and to communicate the things that I experience and learn. The energy to shape words (whether writing or speaking) is like a force of nature in me.

And like everything in my nature, it is ambivalent.

It is the energy of seeking the truth, and of the desire to encourage others in the search for truth.

But it is also the energy of a show-off who wants to be admired, a clown who craves laughter, an acrobat who hungers for applause; it comes, in part, from the vacuum inside me that is desperately insecure, that wants approval again and again, that wants to take the feeling of being appreciated, consume it, and demand more.

It is human to want to be appreciated. But for me this desire is swollen and throbbing and itching in a way that can never be scratched.

I have so much to offer. I am intelligent, learned, experienced in life, and generous toward others. I have a pretty good sense of humor. I am ardent, earnest, devoted, intense, and sincere. But I am also vain, proud, and overly dramatic. And I am insecure, emotionally fragile, anxious, stressed out, overwhelmed. I overdo everything (just look at this list!).

Why am I this way?

The consequences of original sin, of course, are a fundamental factor in the division, distortion, and conflict that everyone faces in life. For me this is augmented by genetic predispositions, physical and mental illness, and the inherent psychological strengths and imbalance of an intelligent and creative personality.

Then I have 52 years of my own concrete human experience -- my (authentic though inadequate) love for God and others, my few accomplishments, my many sins, and all my struggling, failing, suffering, being hurt, and seeking God but too often failing to trust in Him.

There is this world of mistrust inside me, fortified with many weapons and many defenses, stubbornly persisting for no real reason.

I need to be changed, profoundly, in ways I don't even know; to be stripped down, remolded, and forged anew. Sometimes it feels like this is the deep and mysterious truth of what has been happening to me in recent years, in all of these amplified sufferings and confusion and deeper joys too.

A force of nature being forged into something new: this is a process that takes a long time.

It is the work that Jesus is accomplishing in me through the Holy Spirit. I try to work "with Him," but above all I have to surrender my self to His work.

He knows what needs to be accomplished.

More Than a Silver Lining

It's difficult to see things through the window in weather like this!

Rain, rain, rain.

My old bones don't like it much. But their complaints seem small as I look through the window and try to make out what's happening in the fog and the squall.

There are floods, and they are getting worse. And not just floods of rainwater in the Valley.

These are some hard days. The news is hard. Clouds keep gathering on so many fronts. What is happening in our poor world?

Perhaps we are going to learn in a more immediate way how much we all really do depend on one another.

The "human family" is not a cozy, tame little idea. If someone hurts, we all hurt. We can't escape this fundamental fact, no matter what happens in the crises that have gained our attention. Even if the immediate circumstances are resolved on all fronts, the human family already shares a profound bond of suffering. We all share a common affliction.

We also share a common hope.

We share a source of unity that is greater than everything that divides us -- greater than every fear.

I pray that I might remember this fact, and that it will change my mentality and transform my way of looking at the world and all of the problems and the dangers, and all the evil that has already been judged and vanquished.

The Foundation of Our Social Problems (Part 1)

Our world as seen by Google

Clearly the world is in a great deal of trouble. Many good people are engaged in practical action, dialogue, and the kind of realistic negotiations that are so often necessary to maintain a fragile peace or to secure fundamental human rights.

This work is necessary, and indeed heroic because it requires immense energies and creativity to find ways to patch up a crisis or bring some measure of relief or protection in situations that require continued vigilance. Social problems are never solved once and for all. They must be grappled with again and again.

The human ideal remains elusive in this world, and yet the human quest for justice and compassion must press forward here and now, placing its ultimate hope in something greater than our capacities.

It is important to reflect upon the roots of the particular social malaise of today: roots that are as old as human history and yet have a particular significance for our times because our society has obfuscated these roots in unprecedented ways. This is a challenge to us to look explicitly at what so many are trying desperately to evade, and make sure that we ourselves do not forget these roots and the urgent need to address them.

Beneath so many of the problems of our society it is possible to recognize a foundation (or, rather, the profound sense of an absence of foundation). Human beings have no sense of the ground upon which they stand. Often today this is evident in the most basic circumstances. People are disconnected from the human foundations of their own families, and they lack the experience of social stability or of any traditions or customs. They lack any strong human investment in a particular place or a community, and it is difficult to find sustaining motivation for constructive activity or commitment.

Underlying all this human instability is a more radical, existential insecurity. Our society feeds this insecurity insofar as it pretends that the human world is a self contained entity filled with inexplicable yet also autonomous human beings. Our social environment says that human persons come into existence from nowhere and live for nothing, and at the same time that they are invested with the power to act and the freedom and responsibility to define themselves.

It is a bipolar vortex between insignificance and urgency. The human person feels as if he or she is just "here" in time and space, hanging onto existence by a slender thread, and yet wanting to be here, to be and to be more, although the person does not know how or why. There is no foundation, and it is terrifying to just hang here swinging one's legs over an abyss of extinction. Not surprisingly, the person looks for something, anything, that has the appearance of security; something that feels like solid ground on which to stand.

Of course, people don't often feel consciously the naked terror of having no identity, no foundation, no reason for existing. It's an unbearable experience, and most of the time the survival instinct kicks into gear and people quickly find some reason, some seemingly solid reality in the world that will give them a purpose for existing; something they can belong to. Or else they bury themselves in external distractions. But even with the wildest distractions, the feeling lingers subconsciously and so people feel compelled to say things like "I'm trying to find myself."

The presupposition in this society is that your own bare self exists in radical solitude and lack of definition and value. You have no value unless you have found something or someone (or some cause or group) that gives value to you.

No wonder we are so desperate.

No wonder we sink ourselves so readily into factions and ideologically driven groups that wear labels. They give us a sense of belonging. They "validate" our existence.

And no wonder we are willing to wage ruthless war against any idea, group, or person who opposes our faction, or questions its adequacy. We have become convinced that it's a matter of survival, that our identity is at stake -- the very meaning of our existence.

But wait. Do I really belong to nothing in myself? In this moment, am I simply "here," scrambling to assert myself into a self-defined meaningful identity?

Let me, JJ, consider what I experience about myself right now. I would say that I'm here in this moment trying to write something coherent, trying to communicate with others, so as to serve them (and to be appreciated by them -- haha, let's be honest). I want to be "in union with other people," or rather to deepen my union with them.

I find myself "here," in this moment, in a way that can seem frightening but in reality is challenging and dramatic. I am here with a need. I need goodness, love, and not only appreciation but also self-giving. Yes, there is a profound anxiety and lack of self-confidence in me, a fear of nothingness, a sense of insignificance and an impulse toward self-assertion -- but that is not all there is to my being. There is also the fundamental desire to give myself, the intuition of a richness that wants to share itself. I know that my existence is good. No matter how obscure it may seem, I know that I am grounded in something fundamentally, radically good, and that I am responsible to that good, which is the root of me and at the same time "other" than me.

We live in such fear. But what is fear? It is the response to the possibility of losing something. This implies that something is already there, something more fundamental than our fear. It is goodness, truth, and beauty: fundamentals of existing that we do not define.

It is the fact that we are given to ourselves by Another, that our existence is rooted, firmly, in the love of Another. But this Other is beyond anything in the world. The world everywhere points to this Someone, and opens up a journey to seek His fullness, and to belong fully to Him and thus to everyone and everything else.

I exist as "gift" of this Someone, and so I am truly myself by being a gift, by giving myself, by loving.

Our society needs to grow more into an environment that affirms the value of the human person as created by God and called to give his or herself in love ever more fully to God and to others according to God's wisdom. Foundational human experience is complex and ambivalent because human persons have a brokenness; they are burdened with an affliction. They are overwhelmed by anxiety and a desperate sense of the need to create their own identity, because their connection to the transcendent Mystery, the creating, sustaining, infinitely loving Other, so often seems shrouded and obscured.

And this obscure ambivalence in our self understanding is rooted in the whole of human history and its origins, the "original sin" which is the cause of the divided heart that we all experience within ourselves. We cannot pretend that it's possible to ignore these basic truths about the human person and still find real solutions to social problems or make the world a more human place. This is the basis of the human problem, and we must not forget it. No theory or political or economic system is going to make it go away. We need to be aware of it, and as much as possible help others to be aware of it. Of course, we also want to remember and witness to others the answer that God Himself has provided, the miracle of His presence among us.

We do not need to make ourselves or find something that gives value to our being. We have been made, we have value, we are loved. We need to be healed and to grow into our true greatness, to attain the likeness in love of the One who loves us.

Real Life, Real People, Real Love

"If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved" (Romans 10:9).

The name of Jesus is a prayer. When I confess that Jesus is Lord, I am doing so much more than just saying words. I am expressing my commitment in a perceptible way. I am bearing witness. I am lifting up my soul in prayer to the One for whom everything has been created, the One who was born and died and rose from the dead, the One who established Himself as the center and the fulfillment of history, the One who draws all things to Himself, the One who has entered my life, my history, and has proven that the meaning of my life is to belong to Him.

I confess that Jesus is Lord.

He is my Lord. I exist for Him, in a world that exists for Him, this God who became a man and poured Himself out in love on the cross. He pours Himself out in love for me in this moment; He begs me to open my heart and let Him love me in this moment, so that He might fill me with His Spirit and free me to love Him and be transformed in His likeness and cry out "Abba!" This is life. God. Love.

My mouth. This is the reason my mouth was created: to say, "Jesus is Lord!"

For me, this is not an abstract idea. Jesus has grabbed hold of my real life. Every day I see faces that remind me that this is a fact. My confession of faith is not made in solitude. I belong to the Church, and this "Church" is not a faction, not an organization defined by some agenda. It is "living stones," it is real people.

Even as I type these words, I am not alone. The Church is in my living room. Here are six people who remind me that Jesus is Lord of this moment. We are a family. Sometimes we drive one another crazy and get frustrated. We are always falling short, and failing one another. Still, He is Lord, and He is changing us through this life. He is shaping our lives right now, in this moment. Here is this woman and these children (watching a hockey game, doing homework, driving a toy truck on the arm of my chair); without Jesus this moment would have been impossible. Without Jesus, we would not be together.

 

This moment is entirely the fruit of a history of belonging to Him.

The commitment of marriage and family does not have its source in my own generosity. I know very concretely that without Jesus, I would never find the courage to share my life with another human person, much less to surrender myself with this other person to the creative freedom of God so that new human persons might come into the world and experience love through us.

Without Jesus, this doesn't happen.

I am certain that those who aspire to live marriage and family in a true way are sustained by the grace of Jesus Christ. If they do not know His name explicitly, still it is His grace that engenders within their hearts the seeking, the hope, the longing to see the face that makes love possible. In that longing, that poverty, He draws them and sustains them and shapes their hearts and their voices so that one day they will sing the glory of His name.

I am certain of this. I know that without Jesus, my own life is impossible.

Without Jesus; without the Church and her enduring witness; without the supernatural strength of the sacraments; without the people (beginning with my own mother and father, my brother, and others--you know who you are) who confessed with their mouths and lived with their lives this faith, and who communicated to me a love of God that is greater than all my fears...without this reality I have no life.

I have seen life. I have seen with my own eyes that Jesus makes it possible to live a marriage and not be afraid of life, of children, of the mystery of children who need love that is greater than anyone can give.

I have lived with these people, who can give themselves in little gestures, who witness the love of God in their  goodness and their confusion, who struggle and endure and suffer and find joy. I know these people who are so inadequate and broken in themselves, but who are not defeated by their own failures; these people who find forgiveness and extend forgiveness and carry on with a hope that is greater than their weakness.

And I have known certain real people who love Jesus with a vividness that sacrifices everything in an exclusive commitment to Him, a commitment to speak His name to all, to go anywhere, to pour themselves out for persons they have never met....

Without the experience of such a love for Jesus and for me, my life would be nothing. I would have my solitude, my sickness, and the prison of my own thoughts. And a deep desperate cry to an unknown Someone: "please, come!"

Jesus is Lord.

I have seen this. And it is real life. I tell fun stories about my family, and we do have a lot of fun, but family life is hard. Its mysterious and overwhelming. Its messy. Its exhausting. Its a human family, and Jesus doesn't do magic. He doesn't make our humanity disappear; He embraces it and transforms it in His patience, in time.

The name of Jesus is not magic. There are many people who talk about Jesus and do stupid things. Even crazy things. There is nothing surprising about human failure.

The miracle is this life which amazes us, which makes us go forward, stumbling, falling, forgetting, being sorry, being forgiven, stumbling and going forward, convinced that He is with us and that His love is greater than everything.

I have seen a life that is only possible because He has conquered fear, He has conquered death. He has really, truly been raised from the dead, in transformed and glorified flesh and blood. I believe this in my heart. It is His flesh and blood and His glory that makes my own life. It conquers my weakness, renews my spirit, sustains my hope.

The Hymn of Glory

God’s infinite Being, and His infinite Truth, Goodness, and Beauty are reflected by the profound signification that is to be found in the depths of every being He has created.  The human person is led by the mystery of created existence to an acknowledgement of God that is full of wonder and awe.

To praise, to adore and glorify the Infinite Mystery who possesses in an ineffable and super-eminent way all the loveliness of creation--who is the overflowing Source of every good and every beauty that draws and fascinates the human heart--this is at the foundation of religion, and especially of worship.

In a certain sense, all creation worships God. But when this praise is consciously and intentionally taken up and offered to God from out of the heart of the human person, then worship takes on its full stature, and the hymn of glory that all creation sings to God by virtue of all that it is reaches its summit in the personal offering of the human being.

The mysterious sign of the perfection of God imprinted upon each creature and upon the whole of creation finds its voice in human worship, which lifts up the world and consecrates it to God.

How Do I Know There's Anything Worth Seeing?

"I will lead the blind on their journey;
by paths unknown I will guide them.
I will turn darkness into light before them,
and make crooked ways straight" (Isaiah 42:16).

I am blind. Just pitch black blind. And what journey? Am I on a journey? Where am I going, and why would I want to go anywhere? I am perfectly satisfied where I am right now. Really? Am I?

No, I must journey. I can't help it. I'm looking for something more, always. If I stayed "where I am right now," I would start digging a hole, searching. I want something. I always want something.

But I'm blind. I've been blind from birth. Whatever it is that draws me onward, that I search for and yearn for, I've never seen it. I should just forget about it.

But I have a sense in my heart that there is this mysterious reality called "light," as if something could fill the emptiness of my darkness.

By why are the blind not content with darkness?

If I were alone with my blindness and darkness, how could I possibly guess that there were anything to see? Why would I care? How would I even know that I'm blind? I should just forget about it. There is nothing but darkness, surely....

But I want to see.

Here I am, blind, stumbling down my crooked ways, with the desperate, implacable desire to see. As long as I can remember, I've wanted something more than blindness. I can eat and drink and smell and touch and sleep and hear the sounds of birds. I know there is something more than darkness.

And so I journey along these unknown paths, these crooked ways, longing for the light.

The Strength of a Woman

"The moral and spiritual strength of a woman is joined to her awareness that God entrusts the human being to her in a special way. Of course, God entrusts every human being to each and every other human being. But this entrusting concerns women in a special way -- precisely by reason of their femininity -- and this in a particular way determines their vocation....

"A woman is strong because of her awareness of this entrusting, strong because of the fact that God 'entrusts the human being to her,' always and in every way, even in the situations of social discrimination in which she may find herself. This awareness and this fundamental vocation speak to women of the dignity which they receive from God himself, and this makes them 'strong' and strengthens their vocation....

"In our own time, the successes of science and technology make it possible to attain material well-being to a degree hitherto unknown. While this favours some, it pushes others to the edges of society. In this way, unilateral progress can also lead to a gradual loss of sensitivity for man, that is, for what is essentially human. In this sense, our time in particular awaits the manifestation of that 'genius' which belongs to women, and which can ensure sensitivity for human beings in every circumstance: because they are human!"

Blessed John Paul II,
On the Dignity and Vocation of Women, 30

The Hidden Faces Gathered at Our Christmas Crib

Our "traditional" Nativity Scene

May God bless the people in China who made it, wherever they are, and the men who accompanied it on ship across the ocean (along with thousands of exact copies), and all the anonymous Stuffmart employees who trucked it, unpacked it, and shelved it, and everyone else who worked with it...all so that we Americans could buy a decent looking and cheap nativity set. I mean this really: God bless you. Each of you on the gigantic chain of global commerce is a real human person. And you are part of our Christmas, by virtue of whatever role you played in the process of bringing this artifact to us. Your work, however "insignificant," is an expression of your human dignity. Every thing in my house is the fruit of human work--the application of the human energy of countless persons I will never know. But it is fitting, as I look upon the image of God Incarnate, that I remember you all; that I remember that things don't just fall out of the sky; that I remember how much we all depend on one another. There is much injustice in how all of this goes into effect, and I have no idea what would be necessary to unravel it all. But at least, I can acknowledge my gratitude to you. At least I can pray for you, that the Child many of you don't know, but who loves each one of you with an infinite love, might embrace you, and all of us, in His great mercy.

The Dawning of a New, Different Humanity

The next day again John was standing
with two of his disciples;
and he looked at Jesus as he walked, and said,
"Behold, the Lamb of God!"
The two disciples heard him say this,
and they followed Jesus.
Jesus turned,
and saw them following,
and said to them,
"What do you seek?"
And they said to him, "Rabbi,
where are you staying?"
He said to them, "Come and see."
They came and saw where he was staying;
and they stayed with him that day,
for it was about the tenth hour.
One of the two who heard John speak,
and followed him,
was Andrew,
Simon Peter's brother.
He first found his brother Simon,
and said to him,
"We have found the Messiah."

John 1:35-41

Msgr. Luigi Giussani reflects on what must have happened to Andrew on that day, and how it changed him:

"At last came this John, called the Baptist, living in such a way that all the people were struck by him and, from the Pharisees to the humblest peasant, they left their homes to go hear him speak, at least once. That day, we don't know whether there were many or a few, but two were there for the first time, and they were entirely eager, open-mouthed, in the attitude of people who had come from far away, and see what they had come to see with boundless curiosity, with a poverty of spirit, with a childish simplicity of heart.

"At a certain point, a person left the group and went off along the path leading up the river. When He moved off, the prophet John the Baptist, suddenly inspired, cried out, 'That is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.' The people didn't take much notice […] but those two, open-mouthed, with eyes wide open like children, saw where the Baptist's eyes were looking: at that man who was walking away.

"So, instinctively, they set off after Him, followed Him, timid and a little embarrassed. He realized that someone was following Him. He turned around. 'What do you want?' 'Master,' they replied, 'where do You live?' 'Come and see,' He said kindly. They went 'and saw where He lived, and stayed the whole of that day with Him.'

"We can easily identify with those two sitting there, watching that man speak of things they had never heard, yet so close, so fitting, so resounding. […] They did not understand; they were simply captivated, drawn, overwhelmed by Him speaking. They watched Him speak. Because it is by 'watching' […] that some people realized that among them there was something indescribable: a Presence not only unmistakable but incomprehensible, and yet so penetrating; penetrating because it corresponded to what their heart was waiting for, in a way beyond all compare.

"Their fathers and mothers had never told them with such evidence and efficacy what made the years of their life worth living. They hadn't been able to, couldn't have known how; they had said many other right and good things, but like fragments of something they had to try to grasp in the air to see if one matched with the other. A profound correspondence.

"Little by little as the words came to them, and their eyes, full of wonder and admiration, penetrated that man; they felt themselves changing, felt that things were changing: the echo of things changed, the meaning of things changed.

"And when they went home that evening, as the day came to an end–probably walking most of the journey in silence, because they had never spoken to each other as they did in that great silence in which an Other was speaking, in which He went on speaking and echoing within them, and they reached home, Andrew's wife saw him and said, 'What's happened to you Andrew?', and the children, too, looked at their father astonished: he was himself, but 'more' himself; he was changed. It was himself, but he was different.

"And when–as we said once, moved, with an image that is easy to bring to mind because it's so realistic–she asked him, 'What's happened?', he embraced her, Andrew embraced his wife and kissed his children: it was him, but he had never embraced her like that! It was like the dawning of a new, different humanity, a truer humanity.

"It was as if he were saying, 'At last!' without believing his own eyes. But it was too clear for him not to believe his own eyes!"

Conversation: He Talks, But Does He Listen?

Everyday conversation. What do I have to say for myself? Well, for starters, I don't really know how to listen to a person.

I'm not saying that I'm a boor, or that I never let others talk. I do plenty of listening in a conversation. I listen to people's words and give a lot of attention to what they are thinking.

But I don't listen to people.

Sometimes, when people speak to me, my mind works hard to organize their expressions into the form of some coherent problem, and then respond in a way that helps them to resolve their problem. I assume that this is "communication," and I am sincere, because I really do want to help people--which, of course, means finding the right ideas to advance their ways of thinking.

This is not so bad, of course. It can be useful if the person is asking a question, or seeking information.

But often, when people speak, that's not what they want.

Of course, I know that, and I'm very flexible. I don't just belabor people with advice. In fact, I can be useful in variety of different conversations.

Sometimes people just want to banter. Well, I'm good at bantering. Jokes? Even better. Or talk about the weather, or whatever else. I try my best to be agreeable in conversation. After all, I like people. I come from an Italian heritage--of course I like people! I like people and food even better.

And of course, I want people to like me. So what's wrong with that?

Nothing, I suppose. There's nothing wrong with it...well, a bit of vanity here and there....

But am I paying attention to this human person who is speaking to me?

If the person is really giving something of himself or herself to me in a conversation, am I listening? As long as its articulate, informative, or entertaining, or I can be helpful, or I can get the person to like me more? Sure, I'm listening.

But what about those insoluble, inexplicable things, the cries of the heart, those words that are not asking for a solution but are trying to share a suffering? What if the person wants nothing from me? He or she just wants me to listen, to be receptive.

I will try, but my mind starts to wander pretty quickly. My effort is rather weak.

Too often, my desire in human interactions is for me to experience affirmation. I want to come out of a conversation with the sense that my value has been recognized and appreciated. This desire can even be a motivation for "helping" people. It feels great when I receive the recognition and gratitude of people who have been helped by me.

Of course, I'll say, "Oh really, nothing, nothing at all" and "its God's work" (funny how I'm willing to toss a few crumbs to God) and "I'm just a poor man who knows nothing," etc., etc. but don't be fooled by that! A vain person always has a "humility routine" to conceal his vanity from others and especially from himself.

I know that there is something psychologically complex at work here. I really want to recognize and love the other person. I want to see and to rejoice in the gift of God that is the mystery of this other person. I want to receive what he or she has to give. I want to do "what's right." After all, I'm a "good Catholic"! I won't violate God's commandments to satisfy my vanity.

Uhhh...well...not consciously, anyway. Ah...heh...okay, okay, in little ways, yeah...I'll fib sometimes, or I'll diss somebody (just a bit), or I'll play to other people's cynical tendencies because that's always good for a laugh! And I'll buff and wax everything you see and hear (and read) so that you will admire me (hypocrisy? Oh yeah!).

But its not just that. Really, my motivations are usually a complex mixture of self-seeking and other aspirations. There is the desire and the will to seek something more, to find the "you" at the other side of the conversation, to discover communication and community. And then I've glimpsed many times the Beauty that is so much greater than my grasping ego, and that Beauty is always drawing me.

Yes, I'm a mixed bag. A real muddle.

There are so many problems in the world. And I don't have to go anywhere to find "the world." The world beats beneath my ribs.

A real muddle. And also this Beauty, that draws mysteriously, works miracles, changes things. There is the muddle...and then Something Different.

Something has happened in me, in the world. Its changing everything....

People notice it even when I try to hide it. And, really, I don't want to hide it.

You Don't Have to be a Freak About Anything

I have so many thoughts running around my head. I can't focus on a topic to write about. Themes and ideas pass through my mind; images and impressions, memories and hopes and fears.

Stop!

Go out and play ball.

That is pathetic. That's not a batting stance. That's a slouch! Where are your feet supposed to be? And what are you wearing???

That's not a slouch. That's just curvature of the spine.

Oh don't start whining. Move that creaky body and pay no attention to its complaints. Well...don't overdo it. But do it!

Human beings need a variety of activities: we need to read and study and think. We need to talk and to listen. We also need to eat, play, dance, make music, breathe deeply, walk, run, plant things in the ground, explore, and laugh. We need to look at beautiful things. And, of course, we need to sleep.

We need to lift up our minds and hearts and bodies to the One who gives us life, the One who loves us and draws us to Himself. We need to pray. We need to love, and to let ourselves be loved.

We move our bodies and we also move our minds. A healthy human life encompasses this variety in an organic way. You don't have to be a freak about anything. You simply have to live.

Children have a natural sense of how to live. Its one of the many reasons why its good to have them around.

Sadly, in our culture, we don't "live" well. We vacillate between distraction and obsession. This is what's killing us. We think we're all alone with this crazy life and we don't know what to do with it!

But we are not alone. We are never alone.

So give yourself a break.

Homecoming and Friendship

This weekend's annual Homecoming at our college drew me to the post I wrote for last year's Homecoming. I was then prompted to reflect and develop further these (still very incomplete) thoughts about friendship. On a certain level, the things I said last year are a precise "fit" for this past weekend. But my reflections have continued to grow, and so here is a revised post of considerations that are still in progress:

I had some nice visits this weekend with some long-time friends (notice I didn’t say “old” friends). Some were people I had not seen or heard from for many years. Others were people I had not seen for a long time, but whom I have been in touch with in varying degrees through one or more kinds of media. Still others were people I have seen (and keep in touch with) frequently over the past thirty (or more) years

And then, finally, there were the people I see all the time, and who help me in my own life. Especially with them, the pace of daily events often crowds out the simple possibility of "visiting" one another. This is something we hardly realize until some celebration comes along that brings us together gratuitously. This is one of the great values of a celebration.

It is a blessing to be with friends. I marvel with gratitude that my life has been endowed with such real, substantial, and long-lasting friendships. I realize after nearly half a century of life that this is not a common experience in our culture.

But what makes these friendships real? What makes any friendship real? I have found that there are two kinds of enduring friendships, and although both presuppose time spent together, both are based ultimately on something that transcends (even as it enters into) time and space. That “something” is truth.

The first kind of enduring friendship is one that is based on a common search for the truth. These friends may not share the same faith, and may have other disagreements over matters of importance. But they have traveled the road of life together in some way, and have ardently engaged together in seeking the purpose and significance of things.

In these friendships there is a real recognition of “truth,” even if the term is not used, because what unites these friends is their awareness of a common desire for something real, for something that lasts and gives meaning to the events of time and the story of life. It can be a something that is hinted at and reflected through very ordinary experiences that people share, or even in the intuition that corresponds to the harmony they discover with each other through shared interests or sympathy of temperament and perspective.

But for friendship to endure, it is not enough to have “things in common,” or to simply “get along;” there is the enduring theme of a great destination, toward which friends journey–perhaps in the dark, perhaps without knowing the way, perhaps in continual argument over what exactly the destination is, or perhaps simply with the quiet, implicit recognition that it is there and that it draws them onward.

The second kind of enduring friendship is in many ways like the first, but it has another aspect. It is a common journey toward the fulfillment of the truth that has already been encountered. Such friends are often brought together by some particular event or experience they have shared. They have had an encounter with persons and circumstances that seem quite ordinary in themselves, and that might be spread out over a significant period of time. But this apparently ordinary history of place and time and circumstances carries within it the experience of something extraordinary and utterly convincing.

These friends have experienced together something that defines the rest of their lives and that they will never be able to deny without denying themselves. And one often finds that they will be the most odd and unusual sort of companions. One is struck by a great variety of temperaments and preferences, backgrounds, inclinations, and tastes. What binds them together as friends, however, and keeps them together through the years and even through divergent circumstances is this common experience.

And it is not just any experience. It is an encounter with nothing less than the Mystery that gives meaning to all of life, the Mystery that has entered their world and placed them together on a common road. At a certain point in time the truth brought them together, they recognized the truth, they tasted it, they said to one another, “Here is the reason why we live,” they met the truth and were regenerated by it.

Sometimes we forget where we come from. But when we meet our brothers and sisters again, we remember whose children we are, and the home that we are all seeking together. We help each other simply by seeing the different ways in which this awareness has shaped each of us thus far, We recognize--in the various ways that our personalities are maturing, and also in our struggles and failures--the Reality that we still have and still seek in common, even if we haven't seen each other in a long time.

And, of course, we can become great friends with others who have found this same truth under different concrete circumstances, whom we meet further down the road.

All this, however, raises another question: When I encounter the truth of my life, does that mean I can no longer have the "first kind" of friendship? Does it mean that I ought to look down upon those who are still searching, with pity and a sense of superiority? Not at all. Quite the contrary!

The truth of my life is not an abstract theory, which I can master by learning its terms and its logic. The truth of life is a Person. He has not come into my life to end my journey, but to show me where I'm going, to draw me to Him, and to shed light on everything along the way.

This means that my friendship with those who are still seeking the truth can only become more profound. The relationship with Him who is the truth of life can only deepen my appreciation and reverence for every person, and my desire to be their companion. I recognize that I myself am part of the experience of that person's life, through which the Mystery-who-dwells-among-us invites and draws their freedom.

Those of us who know Jesus Christ cannot simply live like a club, or a partisan group that controls truth and that preaches down at others. We are called to stay together as brothers and sisters, but also to dwell with others and share their lives and their sufferings and their searching. He who is "the truth" has us. He is changing us, and He wants us to be living witnesses within the journey of others...with the right words in their proper time, but above all with the love that He generates and shapes according to His particular plan for each person.