This is an unusual day. It's 7 o'clock in the morning and I am wide awake. Writing.
Usually, on mornings like this, when I ride back to Irving with my dad from home, you can find me sprawled out on the back seat with the light blue fleece blanket that I like to call the vanket (because I guess it's the designated van blanket?) sleeping like a giant infant. This morning however, as hard as I tried to steal some more sleep, hearing Mother Angelica discuss Jesus and the cross over the fuzzy AM radio station, I just somehow couldn't.
You'd honestly think that something you've heard about for years and years already could easily put you to sleep, but it just goes to show that this is never the case with the Truth, is it? It always stirs something in your heart, keeps you up, and, most importantly, wakes you up. Always.
When you're as awake as I am right now, you'd realize that there's a gaping hole between knowing the Truth, and believing and actually living it out. The Truth makes it known in our own hearts that it's missing when it's missing. Apart from the truth, from being awake, what then is our life but asleep? When then is our life, but away from the light that illuminates, makes visible, and real all that we have faith in, all that we hope for, and, most of all, all that we love?
"Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen."
Perhaps it isn't being able to be awake to see that is our problem because I feel as if that's all we ever really want to do. We live our whole lives seeking this truth. We live our whole lives seeking a Truth that will complete us, that will somehow unite the million different truths into this one Truth that unites us, too. We feel -- emphasis on I -- the need to see because when we live our lives there is not a single part of it we can live out, we dedicate every single ounce of our being to the life we lead. However, it's almost as if we won't choose to believe until we do see. We don't want to lose our lives over something we don't know. That becomes an even bigger problem because it shows us that we don't even know what it is that we're looking for -- how will we know it when we finally do find it? We have to first believe with our whole heart and our whole life in the Truth of the one thing that has been and will always remain to be constant in our lives -- Love. We must first be in love -- to drown ourselves in love -- before we can love. In the same paradoxical way, it is only by loving that we can find ourselves in love.
I don't really think we can live any other way. We learn to do by doing, we live to love by loving.
Maybe this is why I'm wide awake. As we've all heard, life is too short to be not living it. That gaping hole between knowing about the Passion of Christ and actually sharing in that passion has kept me up. I'd like to look at the philanthropists, the peacemakers of this world as beacons of light, but no other life shines brightly like Christ's. This man gave everything -- his other cheek, his reputation, his dignity, forgiveness, peace, Truth, His Divinity, and, above all, love in fullness in the flesh.
This gaping hole between knowing and living out of Love is made wider by our pride. As love-hungry as our whole human race is, we have been accustomed to think that we ought to simply be givers of it and not as people who are being constantly given of it or in need of it. We live in a culture that teaches us to be go-getters completely dismissing the fact that there are some things we don't have to work for and are given for the sake of being given. Again, that gaping hole between wanting to be loved and actually humbling ourselves in accepting that we are nothing without it, and are in desperate need of it makes the absence of the Truth about love known. Especially during this Holy Week, there is nothing more and nothing less to reflect on but just how Jesus truly shows us how to love with the love of the Father -- to love with a life-giving love.
Only by fully emptying out ourselves for the sake of love can we live life to the fullest. Only by this can we love to the fullest and experience joy to the fullest. Only with the passion that Christ had for every single one of us, for the passion He had for the truth of love, we are able to experience life.
When we finally fill that gaping hole by actually loving this passionately, we find that, even with our eyes closed, we can put our full faith in something as risky and seemingly impossible as loving simply because of its Truth. Even in darkness, we can burn brightly in love, convicted that this light will reach all ends of the earth. Even in not knowing, we believe simply because love is true and has been made eternal in our hearts.
Simply said, without love, there is no life. We cannot "sort of" love, we cannot love "here and there" because we cannot just "sort of" live or live "here and there" either. We either do or we don't know what love is. If we did, we would just love. Without questions. Without doubts. The life that blooms from loving the way Christ exemplifies it in His passion as we will be awaken by this Holy Week will surely make you want to go beyond existence.
I don't think I've ever looked at or thought of the Cross as much as I have been for the past forty days. For the past year of my life. And for the first time, I have never been more convicted to say that the only way to love is to be open. It is the one thing that we can simultaneously, and must simultaneously do -- give and receive. We will not see unless we allow ourselves to believe the things that we see. We will not love unless we allow ourselves to believe that we are loved.
I want to love like that. I want a love that takes my whole life to give, and fills my whole life when receiving.
Blessed Holy Week, everyone.
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