Category: Love

Movie Love

“I think I’m falling in love with you.”

That line from a movie should be captivating and romantic but at that specific point in the movie I found it utterly—belated and ridiculous.  So far the movie had been mindless albeit slightly different from other chick flicks that I’ve seen, but it came to a necessary aspect in nearly every modern romantic movie.  Boy and girl become very passionate and end up in bed together with no ring on their fingers to make this a marital embrace but rather an over-glorified way to use the other person.  In this particular movie, the guy and girl are in bed and as she is going to tell him something, he looks her in the eyes and huskily admits, “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

My response?  A few short disbelieving laughs and an overwhelming sense of sadness.  You think that you are falling in love with her?  Aren’t those words (or perhaps simply “I love you”) supposed to come before you say those words with the language of the body?  I think the effect is supposed to elicit a response of “Awwww!”  But instead it makes me realize how far we have fallen.  The pinnacle of expressing one’s love for the other person is not found in virtuously denying oneself for the good of the other but rather in letting passion consumed oneself.

The romantic movies that are produced by the mainstream media always leave me less than fulfilled.  The man could be strikingly handsome and the girl witty and smart yet as soon as they fall into the cliché that love = sex, I find myself saddened inside.  If this is what the media is hailing as natural and love, then I shouldn’t be surprised at the decay of the culture.  The dignity of the human person is not upheld as it should be.  When I see a romantic movie it would be nice if I didn’t have to say, “That was good.  Except for….”  Or to think that it would be exactly the love story I would want if only they had shown virtue and a desire for the good of the other person.  Instead I typically leave with this odd feeling that is half wistful and half disgusted. 

I am a romantic by nature–perhaps not discoverable exteriorly but definitely found within my heart.  I want a wonderful love story and a love that is unending.  Yet I do not find myself agreeing with the only romance Hollywood knows how to offer.  Rather I begin to feel that I must be one of a small contingent that has a radically different view of love.  A purer, deeper, truer but far less exalted type of love.  The modern day romantic “fairy tale” ending is ridiculously trite.  In fact, it would be far more innovative for Hollywood to begin to use the oft-forgotten tale of the man and woman who show their radical love for one another within the embrace of Holy Matrimony.

This weekend I found a song with which I have fallen in love.  Her voice is beautiful and the lyrics are true.  It leaves me with a desire to be married yet with none of the bad aftertaste found in the typical mainstream music and society.  Relish this piece of true beauty!

http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/NVG6DFPARrA&source=uds

While writing this I also thought of how if we want to transform the media and the culture, we must be willing to support places that are striving to do just that.  I want to see a change in what is being offered in the culture but if I do not support them, how are they to succeed?  So just when I needed it, I received an invitation to support a movie that speaks of the dignity of the human person.  I accepted the invitation and I would like to extend it to you.  While it isn’t speaking of the human sexuality of the person being trampled upon, it nevertheless is speaking about the inherent dignity of each individual regardless of the context of the situation.  Please support them in prayer and money and pass it along to your friends and family.  If we want to see this culture change, it will be through a group effort.  And it will require sacrifice.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/450183161/frohe-ostern-movie?ref=live

P.S. God is ridiculously and madly in love with you.  He is pouring His mercy out upon you but He needs you to accept this mercy and glory in it.  This unfathomable love doesn’t really make sense–but that is probably why it is called “Divine Mercy.”  No mere human person is capable of that kind of love and mercy.  But glory to God we have a God who not only provides for the weak and the lowly (i.e. you and me) but loves to do that. 

For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.

If I do not love….

Perhaps this will simply reveal my vast flaws as a Christian, but teaching seems to highlight difficulties that I never noticed before.  I know that it is difficult to love others.  I’ve done Totus Tuus, I’ve been a part of a family, I’ve done mission trips, and I’ve driven on the interstate.  Love is difficult. 

Teaching high school has brought a whole new aspect to the “Love is difficult” mantra.  I find myself unable to love firmly.  While I don’t enjoy it, I can be tough and strict with my students.  And when I want to (sometimes when I don’t want to), I can be a push-over and let them get away with things.  What I have yet to perfect (after an entire 6 months of teaching) is the art of loving firmly.  To maintain order and get things accomplished while yet being kind and loving. 

If we are speaking of a battle of the wills, I can fight them to the death.  But (luckily) I realized fairly early on that it would be in my best interest to not make my entire profession into a battle of wills.  So I have to decide when to be stubborn and when to give a little.  That is still a matter that is difficult to master.  Yet regardless of that battle, I need to be charitable.  I need to be Christian.  I teach high school students and at times I can feel myself desiring to play at their level.  My feelings are hurt when they fall asleep in class, do homework for another class, roll their eyes, dismiss my ideas, and attempt to cast doubt on every aspect of the faith.  Instead of being mature, I want to roll my eyes back at them and spit out a couple perfectly formed sarcastic retorts. 

If Christ taught the Gospel of love it would seem that I should be quite proficient in it, seeing as I am teaching about Christ.  But teaching has revealed to me all sorts of weaknesses that I didn’t know I had or that I had thought were sufficiently concealed.  How would this be my mission field if I didn’t begin to see my failings and question why God placed me where He did?  I have had to remind myself several times (I should do this more, perhaps) that while God could have placed someone in my position with more knowledge and skill, He placed me here for some reason.  There is some way that He wants me to grow from this experience.  Growth hurts, it is painful.  Yet the reward is far sweeter due to the bitterness and pain.  I think of intelligent people I know (priests, nuns, lay people) and I question why I have been given the task of instructing the youth in the faith.  There are so many who could do such a better job.  Maybe this is largely the task for my sanctity, as well as their sanctity.

If teaching is my mission field, then I need to reveal Christ to them primarily through my personal Gospel of Love.  How can I convince them of the radical love of Christ if they don’t experience love from me?  Ah, the mission field!  I find myself dreaming of returning to “my” Honduras–a place I grew and loved.  But the Lord blessed me in those mission trips and made them so beautiful and easy.  Now He is sending His little daughter into the “grown-up” missionary field of a high school.  The commitment is longer, the results seem less tangible, and the people I am ministering to don’t realize it/aren’t thankful.  Quite a change from Hondurans eager to welcome us and sacrifice food and rooms for us.  But the Lord has this beautiful way of easing us into things.  He will give us sweetness and then bitterness to test our motives. 

So I go into this mission field with a heart deficient in love yet deeply desiring to excel in it.  What would a mission be without challenges?  Perhaps life is a constant learning how to love–whether it is God or neighbor.  We fail but we continue to try.  Because we were made for, by, and in Love.  Since we have received much we must go and give that to others.  Starting with that which is nearest to our hearts, which hurts the most to give when we know it may be rejected.  This battle is where I can learn to be most like Christ–being willing to love even when pushed away, rejected, crucified.  As St. Paul Miki and companions died heroically for the faith, so I am called to be martyred daily for my faith.  Impossible on my own.  But I know a great Teacher who can show me how. 

We love, because He first loved us. ~ 1 John 4:19

 St. Paul Miki and Companions, pray for us!

"Beauty will save the world."

Today I came to a (rather) profound realization–the closer one is to God, the better one can see beauty.  This understanding came as I was driving home from work and contemplating my seniors rather immediate rejection of the “Argument from Beauty” that was presented to them today.  Many of them argued that beauty wouldn’t sway anybody.  I asked them if they had ever seen a sunrise or a sunset and been moved with feeling that there must be more.  One class in particular seemed to indicate that it had never happened to them.  I was amazed.  I could think of a couple dozen times over the past few months that the sunrise or sunset alone had filled me with joy and gladness.  Often it leads me to break into spontaneous praise.  As I drove home, I was surveying a gorgeous sunset.  How could they not understand this beauty? 

Then it came to me–because they weren’t very close to Beauty.  The more that I thought about it, the more sense it seemed to make.  These past few years I had grown closer to God and thus I rejoice more in God’s creation.  My semester in Austria was one of constant beauty and wonder.  That is when I first realized that God loves me through beauty.  In particular, I was in Iseltwald, Switzerland.  I saw a breathtaking scenery that words fail to describe and I knew that in that moment God was fiercely loving me.  In fact, a friend and I walked around the lake, belting out praise and worship songs.  My feeling from the entire day was one of amazement that I could experience such beauty.  And that was linked closely to the understanding that I was experiencing Beauty. 

 
Experience some beauty for yourself!
 

  The view from the hostel…
 

Or there have been times when I have experienced the depth of beauty found in a book.  I Believe in Love, for example, or some passages of Scripture that just speak to my heart.  See Psalm 63.  Or when I listen to a beautiful song that moves my heart.  There are times when I am with my family and my nephew gives that irresistible smile that speaks volumes of beauty.  The time that you can spend with really close friends–when you have deep conversations and the silence is never awkward but always filled with time to ponder the depths of goodness.  Or that moment of silence in which you can rest despite the surrounding chaos.  The sweet moments spent before Our Eucharistic King.  I have experienced so much beauty!  In my mind it makes so much sense to know God through the different experiences of beauty.  

Now here was a classroom full of students so willing to dismiss beauty and say that it was just a matter of preference.  I wanted to argue that beauty isn’t always subjective but I didn’t know how I would confront their arguments.  I already had students sitting there with “This is so stupid” written over their faces.  Does beauty mean so little?

The closer we draw to Beauty, the more we are capable of seeing Him in the world around us.  If we are living in sin or have no desire to know Him, then our ability to see beauty diminishes.  The atheist could very well see beautiful things and call them such.  But it is the contemplative nun who sacrificed her life for God that can see beauty in every moment.  It is the sacrificing father that can see the beauty in life.  The one who is running after Christ can see beauty amidst the suffering of life. 

I don’t want to say that beauty is a matter of perspective, but how you are living and what you value can transform what is beautiful.  I wish I could claim to see beauty perfectly, but I do not.  Too often I will admit the beauty of the sunrise but fail to see the beauty in my student or in that stranger that just cut me off on the interstate.  Yet how more beautiful is the person than the rest of creation?  Google images even proves it.  I googled “beauty” and I saw pages and pages of women.  They weren’t the most modestly covered women, but it seemed to indicate that we know where true beauty lies, even if we misuse beauty.

How do you teach someone to love beauty?  I showed them 30 pictures of landscapes, sunrises, and children.  Many of them seemed to think I was wasting their time.  Just pictures.  Just beauty?  I am beginning to see the truth of the quote by Fyodor Dostoevsky:

“Beauty will save the world.”

Book Mountain, Gaming, Austria

It is true.  Beauty will save the world.  If we cannot accept Beauty, if we cannot see Him, then we can never experience the utter beauty that is Heaven or understand the beauty of Earth.  I don’t know how I can teach this understanding of beauty to my students.  They have so much and yet they have so little.  If only I could give them some of my experiences of beauty and make them not be simply my stories but rather their own experiences.  They see a Church of rules and strictness.  But they are missing the Church of ineffable beauty and unsurpassed joy.  This must be a thing that only God can work in their hearts through the power of His mercy and love.

 Love does take us and transfigure and torture us. It does break our hearts with an unbearable beauty, like the unbearable beauty of music.                   ~G.K. Chesterton

Lord, take us and transfigure us with Your Beauty.

 
 

The Quest: To Be a Saint

A new year, some new classes, and nearly 80 new students.  Some interesting things have already transpired, some for which I suppose I asked.  I thought it would be neat if my students took a temperament test and then I could review the results and try to discover some of their characteristics quickly.  So in class I gave them the web address that I wanted them to go to take the test and it just happened to be one for Catholic Match.  I didn’t fully understand what I was setting myself up for until I was preparing to write the address on the board.  When I did, the response was typical–some chuckling, a few muffled remarks, and the overall questioning air that seemed to compel me to confess or deny their silent accusation.  I did neither, for the most part.  Perhaps the next embarrassing thing was telling them that they couldn’t do this assignment at school either, because the school had blocked the address.  At times I forget about the person of the high schooler and fail to remember that many trivial things can be made ridiculous when presented to a group of teenagers.  Another interesting thing occurred when I reviewed the syllabus and mentioned the school policy on cell phones.  In order to make it absolutely clear to them, I added a line that said that failure to comply with the rules would result in harsher penalties.  My seniors primarily glazed over that but my sophomore classes picked up on it and some wanted to know what the penalty was.  I hedged and simply told them that they didn’t really want to find out.

As I was speaking to my seniors today I tried to present the idea of sanctity to them.  I called them to become saints and to not wait for later or to assume that knowing the answers is sufficient.  As I spoke to them I realized how much of this I need to remember.  I cannot simply spend my day talking about Jesus, I must talk to Him.  The more I interact with my students, the more I realize how much further I have to grow in sanctity.  The thought came to me today that God is using this job as a way to draw me closer to Himself, that all of the challenges and problems are His way of perfecting me.  There is a lot of perfecting that needs to take place.  Today I considered my deficiency in love.  I want to love only those who like me.  Praying outside the abortion clinic in college was my initial experience of forcing myself to love in the face of intense adversity.  However, school is different.  It is much more of a marathon.  It isn’t exhilarating or enlightening to love my students in the midst of their utter humanity.  It doesn’t seem heroic, it doesn’t fill me with warm feelings, and I don’t have someone to talk to about how much I feel like I grew in the process.  Instead, it is just hard.  I don’t want to do it and I can feel myself rebel.  Loving to the point of pain.  That is my calling and yet I fail to do it so often.  I was serious when I told them that I would help sanctify them and they will help sanctify me.  Then I realize that if I truly desired to be a saint above all other desires, if my holiness was what I was concerned about more than my physical or mental health, how much more I would do to further that goal.  It is often surprising how lukewarm we can be while mistakenly thinking we are so zealous and hard-core.  How good it is that we have a God who knows the trappings of human nature because He took them on Himself.  But our desire to please Him and live for Him does please Him.  And if we are serious, we will accept the grace He offers to live out His will.

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
                                                                                         –Thomas Merton
   

I’m in love…

I am in love with the most beautiful and brilliant person.  He loves me beyond my deserving and pursues my heart with all the tenderness of a Lover.  In the morning He graces me with a glorious sunrise and in the evening He makes the western skies so filled with vivid colors that I am in danger of running into the car in front of me on my way to Mass.  Then He embraces me in the warmth of the adoration chapel, whispering to my heart about the joys of being a member of the living Church, the Body of Christ.  He stills my mind with its many worries and concerns, drawing me into His very heart.  Then He lays down His life for me and offers me the best He has to offer, His very self.  My Love proceeds to sit with me, knowing that quality time is the way to love me best.  He has all of the time in the world for me.  In fact, He has beyond time–He has a timeless love that He strives to impart to me.  Soothing my fretting heart, consoling my desirous heart, wrapping me in His mantle of palpable divine love, He makes me long for forever with Him.  And Lover that He is, He stitches stars into the night sky for me to admire on my drive home.  I am in love with the most beautiful and brilliant person ever.  He has written His name on my heart–and it is Love.