What Matters

I want to take just a moment to reflect on what matters in life.

My cat needing to be fed is important, but my roommate needing to talk is more important.
My bathroom needing cleaned is important, but making food for my friend is more important.
My bills need to be paid, but a friend in need is more important.
My life may need to be organized or reordered, but that order must begin with prayer first.

What matters are these two things: relationship with God our Father, and relationship with all those we love.

Nothing ought to stand in the way of those as the order of our lives.

Recently I had a day that was not a day of proper ordering. I did not make it to mass as I had wanted, I did not remember to pray certain prayers I wanted to pray, and I did not make certain quiet time happen that I felt I needed. Likewise, I found that I was distant and irritable around those I love, especially my boyfriend, who so generously loved me that day, despite my failure.

Why is that? What is it that gets to us, that can attack from within? Christ himself told us that what defiles comes from within, from within a man's heart. ("But what comes out of a person, that is what defiles. From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile." Mk. 7:20-23) Why is it that when my heart was being offered so many blessings, I was unable to receive them? For, in not receiving them, I left myself unable to recognize the good things I had and unable to be thankful. And in that state of ingratitude, I had nothing to give to anyone else.

I find that to live a life where we love one another, where we lay down our lives and sacrifice in love for our neighbors, our brothers and sisters, our families, and our Church, we must first and foremost know the love we have received. We cannot forget from whom we came from. We cannot forget that our existence is a gift! We cannot forget that our Father in heaven created us from nothing (ex nihilo). We must impress upon ourselves the truth of our state. We cannot call ourselves into being! We do not have the power over life and death. Before we are masters, we are servants. Before we are in control, we are at the mercy of the world. We have a God who is all Mercy, all Love, all Generosity, all Forgiveness. We have received an invitation to eternal life, to eternal participation in the mysterious joy that is the Love of the Trinity! Yet, we cannot accept this invitation unless we know, in all humility and truth, our littleness, our frailty, and in light of that, the totality of gift that the invitation is! It is not deserved. It was won for us by the sacrifice of the Life of the Son of God.

If we live this life with a prayer to know our state of being in truth, our being-as-gift, we will simultaneously recognize the depth, height, breadth and magnitude of God's mercy and love, and our own indebtedness which calls to us to participate in and imitate that same humble love. We ought to turn to our brothers and sisters, friends and coworkers, bosses and cab drivers, and place them first. Clearly, the heroism that Love requires is a grace given to us, and we must always pray to have it. Yet, we should not allow ourselves to be dis-ordered from the truth if we can help it. We should not let satan find ways of screwing up the order so that before God's gift and love comes our own power or our own weakness. How often men find themselves lost in their sin, unable to forgive themselves some flaw, even when others forgive them. Likewise, how often men are lost in their pride, unable to accept that they do not have the power in life they desire or think they have. How often we are wrapped up in our own little world, whether its self-pity or self-loathing or self-doubt, and are unable to see the person standing right in front of us.

Consider how often in Scriptures it is a blind man who reaches out to Christ saying, "Lord, I want to see." If only this could be our prayer. Jesus, help us to be un-blinded. To shake off the scales that cling to our eyes. It all comes back to the order of our lives. Who is first? Do we worship before we work? Is the credit of any good offered back to the giver of all good things? Do we adore before we desire to be adored? We will not learn how to serve one another unless we see we have already been served, by the one whose service is the greatest act of Love and Sacrifice the world has ever known.