Noble Contradiction

+JMJ+

Lent 2009: Day 12

It seems things are congealing...in ways I never imagined. I've been poking around all my 'vocation stuff' and found this essay I submitted to a contest last year. Let me know what you think; I never heard back from the publisher.

+++++++

Noble Contradiction
A Case for God

For thousands of years, people like Aquinas and Augustine have eloquently made a case for God. There is something to be said for words--they inspire and instruct, and at times deeply influence society. Yet, today words cannot win the case for God--only a choice to live a case for God will hold in the court of popular culture. I'll admit that this is not easy choice to make. As a 20-something, I've been told all my life that I can do anything, go anywhere, be whatever I want. So, what would motivate me to live a life that could point to God?

I've seen the fruit of freedom and relativism first hand. I vividly remember a teen with whom I debated the morality of the Vagina Monologues tritely respond to me, "Well, I have my truth, and you have your truth, and we can agree to disagree." He was rather proud of his come back, I was distressed. We are all entitled to our opinion, but that I have "my truth" makes it difficult to discover Truth with a capital "T." In a world where reality is merely subjective, it is time to turn to the facts.

My peers and I are comfortable with our reality. We have gay uncles that we love and best friends who've experimented with, well, everything. Our pastors have been dragged away because of the sexual abuse scandals, but at least we were never hit by nuns with rulers--we're lucky if we've ever seen a nun in the flesh. We want to be committed to something, just not forever. At least, that is the trend. This is our reality.

Embracing the term "Odyssey Years," few of us take a stable job after graduating from university. We'd much rather float around the globe, Kerouac style...and experience as many other realities as possible. What makes us unique is that we want to serve. Even if we are confused, we have been imbued with a deep thirst for social justice.

Somewhere in the midst of all that, I happened on a little island off the coast of Portugal. Thousands of miles away others like me happened in Michigan and Illinois, Missouri and Massachusetts, New York and California. We were raised by not-so-perfect families, but we were raised with the best of intentions.

I am a bit of a fluke for my generation. Not only did mom home school me, I was also raised in the Tridentine Latin Mass. I wore a mantilla until I turned 18, at which point I began to attend Jesuit Masses--which were wildly different from my childhood experience of Liturgy. What stayed the same was the witness I saw around me. I was still surrounded by men and women on their knees, praying to the God that "may be." They trusted in a reality that could not be held, and somehow lived lives that pointed to God.

As my collegiate journey continued, I began to realize how unsatisfied I was. I was disappointed by campus culture, and even more so by lack of reference point. Everybody wanted to change the world, but nobody seemed to care if there was consensus on how this could be achieved. It was an endless witness of talking heads, talking, talking, talking...but what where they doing?

I had to ask myself, what was I doing? I was living the cute Catholic girl status quo. Everybody loved me, I did my little pro-life thing but I didn't impose my ideas on others. I didn't speak out about our lack of reference point, or expose how as a Catholic campus, we seemed to be embarrassed by the reality of the God we claimed to be Jesus Christ. I was living a choice, but not the choice that would best be a case for God.

Then I became an upper classman and my reality imploded. I could no longer play it safe. I had a deep desire to make a more radical choice. My peers and I began spending endless hours engaging the administration "Why?" so many things happened on campus that were contrary to our concept of Catholicism. This was the standard response: "What do you want to do about the problem?"

What did we do? We got on our knees then got to our feet. We started an underground Catholic newspaper and fought condom distribution and the Vagina Monologues. We met regularly in the "upper room", as my apartment became known, and built community around meals and our faith in the God that nobody seemed to acknowledge. We stood around statues of Mary and prayed the Rosary in public. We kept fighting for God, and kept up our strength with midnight trips to an urban Adoration Chapel, where we found that God to be very real and very intimate.

The phrase "Urban Saints" became popular among us. Looking back on those years, it is clear to me that we were trying as best we could to live a case for God. We had a clear understanding that all of our choices would make or break us. We couldn't stand and pray in public on Wednesday morning and hook-up all weekend.(confusing sentence) Our lives were a constant struggle for consistency. All we could stand upon in public were our actions. In our hearts, we knew better, though. We knew our foundation was that time on our knees.

As much as college was a time of action, it was also a time of discovery. I became more and more comfortable with who I was, but constantly questioned why I was here. I could only be a college student so long, and the sanctuary of our little campus chapel wouldn't last forever. What kind of choice could I make that would bring peace?

Following suit with the "odyssey years", our experiment with the Catholic newspaper launched a documentary project right after graduation. Strapped with backpacks and a mini-DV camera, my friend T.J. and I pilgrimaged to Europe to explore what that man Karol Wojtyla (who would become John Paul II) was all about. Both of us, and so many of our colleagues, had a strong attachment to Pope John Paul, considering this celibate man a spiritual father. We were particularly captivated by his understanding of human sexuality, and his constant affirmation that God needed us, that we had an irreplaceable role to play.

As the two of us pilgrimaged through Austria, Poland and Italy in an attempt to understand John Paul and the God he so passionately abandoned himself to, things began to happen. I had a deep sense not only of the reality of God, but even more that God knew me, and He was choosing to need me. This wasn't an isolated incident, but rather a recurring theme in my young adult life. In Europe, it hit in a unique way.

In the spirit of contradiction, the place I most sensed the reality of God was Auschwitz. As I stood in the starvation bunker where St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe died for a fellow prisoner, all I could think was, "this was a man who started printing presses, journeyed to Japan and created a movement in Poland attracting thousands to God, this was a man who loved this God so much that he was willing to lay down his very life." I saw the water stained corner where he was injected with carbolic acid because he wouldn't starve to death fast enough for the Nazis. As I heard the story that he died singing the praises of that God he had dedicated his existence to, I was left speechless. He lived a choice to point to God.

I've been told stories of martyrs--men and women who died rather than reject faith in the God they knew to be--since I was a small child. I even wanted to be a martyr, actually, I was fascinated with being a virgin martyr. But, to see the reality of martyrdom in a place so full of evil as Auschwitz was an event not easily replicated. Maximilian was a man who could have done anything, and yet, what did he do? He laid down his life for his brother, in a spirit of radical love that could only be inspired by something far greater than the self.

I'll admit, when I got back from Europe, I doubted my entire existence. How could I be? What in God's name could I do that was worth anything? So many others so much greater than I had gone before me. It took a hard look in the mirror to be shaken out of this doubt, and begin to let the graces of that journey seep into the marrow of my bones. But what choice ought I to live?

Deep down inside, we've all been imbued with a sense that there is something extraordinary out there that we must do. Sadly, many of us stop short in our quest to find the answer to our deepest question, "Why am I here?" In the midst of war, poverty and violence, we are thrown into a rather bleak reality that requires something mystical to make sense of it all. If there is a choice to be made, we have to reconcile the reality of suffering.

I remember bouncing ideas about suffering around in a theology class, reading from the Jewish philosopher Simone Weil. Her perception of suffering is that it must be redemptive, otherwise it could only be evil. As my friends and I pondered the reality of the Crucifixion we'd heard about since Sunday school, bolstered by theologians and mystics like John Paull II, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, St. Edith Stein and Adrinne Von Speyr, things began to congeal.

The more I read from this contemporary group of theologians, the more reality began to make sense. I thought about the Cross. Intellectually, I knew what Catholic Theology taught: that through Christ's suffering and death on the cross, He brought about Redemption for mankind, who had been in a fallen state since the sin of the apple in the Garden of Eden. Yet, there was a difference between intellectually grasping this and actually believing it in my heart.

The more challenging life became, the more I felt drawn to Mass and Adoration. I remember spending hours in the Adoration Chapel just crying, not out of sadness, but rather through accepting that my head and my heart were slowly becoming integrated. What I believed intellectually was actually internalized in the deepest core of who I was as a person.

Slowly the world around me began to reflect the deepest longings in my heart. I began to "see" God in others, and soon I became witness to radical choices. Young men I knew began to enter Seminary. I began to meet young women who were preparing to enter religious life--and then I became one of those women! It seemed like all of us shared a sense of peace in this discernment, but also a sense of urgency. If I could truly do anything and be anyone, what did this conviction about religious life mean?

Great apologists--defenders of the Catholic faith--have argued a case for God. In contemporary society, though, words don't work. We can't make that argument in a world where everyone has their own truth. No matter how eloquently we may learn to speak, we must become scholars in the language of the heart. The heart only learns through experience, and is only converted through a witness to love.

What is love? It is a perfect reflection of God. It is seeking the good of the other, as other. It is a noble desire for the ultimate good of my neighbor, with no strings attached. In essence, it is a selfless love, a love this world is starving for. In my heart I know we are all called to love this way, we are all called to abandon the culture of use that objectifies the other at every turn. My task is to choose a life in which I can love best, and I beleive I can best live a case for God by choosing celibate life as a religious sister.

There will always be a hunger for human affection. I am a person, not an angel. A vocation to religious life or the priesthood requires a unique courage and sacrifice, and I do not pretend to have acquired such virtue, but I am learning. Every reality of the human experience must be sanctified in order to be a witness to love, especially human sexuality. In this quest to integrate who I am as a women into a life of love and service, I am discovering deep joy.

What can this witness say to a world that is saturated by sex and self-satisfaction? How will people perceive a successful young women leaving all that she has to answer that call, "Come, follow me?" Maybe some will think I'm crazy, but in this world of relativism, at least they'll let me have my truth. In that concession, the world may not realize they have accepted my choice, which is essentially my case for God.

In the current adaptation of C.S. Lewis' "Prince Caspian", Dr. Cornelius says to Caspian, "You have the potential to become the most noble contradiction in history..." In a world where everyone has words, our deeds will be the measure of our lives. The question is, do we have the courage to be that noble contradiction? Are we willing to let go of the things that do not last, to seek first the Kingdom...and let our lives be a case for God?