Love is the bend in the road of despair

Love is the bend in the road of despair

By Mary Regina Morrell

"Perfect love casts out fear."

When it came time to write the recent issue of a monthly newsletter, I attempted to insert the pictures I had chosen for my topic but no matter how hard I tried, using the same method I have used every other month, the picture could not be inserted on the page. After almost an hour of effort I began to get testy and announced to God, "OK, I get the message. You don't want me to write about this topic. Just what is it you want me write about?"

I emptied my mind of all thoughts and closed my eyes for a few seconds. Immediately I saw the image of a desert. I sighed, and though I didn't want to write about the desert experience I began to list words that would describe for others what it must be like to spend time alone in the desert, a powerful experience for the early monks and for Jesus, himself.

The words came -- desolate, unbearable, a struggle for breath and life, an assault on body and mind, a seemingly endless experience of hell.

Then from the bowels of my soul another word began to take shape. Suicide.

For a moment time seemed suspended as I realized the words I had been using to describe the desert experience described, also, the journey through depression and, often, to suicide.

Suicide is an ugly, frightening word. We speak of it in hushed syllables, or not at all. How could anyone do such a thing, we wonder. Why would anyone do such a thing? For most of us it is incomprehensible. But not for all of us. Some of us understand all too well the despair, the pain, the emptiness, the grief that tears at a soul with such ferocity that death seems the only road to peace - a kind of desert experience gone wrong. I trembled at the prospect of what I believed I was being asked to do. Please, God, I'm not ready. Tell me this is not what you want.

In the silence that ensued I found my answer. This was not about me, my level of comfort with the subject or my pride. It was not meant as a therapy session. Clearly, it was meant solely for another. Who, I don't know, but I've grown enough to know that God's reasons are always reason enough. But just what was it I was supposed to reveal to this "other?"

I struggled for the insight to understand what element was present in the spiritual desert experience of the ancient fathers and mothers of the Church but missing from the emotional desert experience that can lead to suicide. To find the answer I had to reflect long and hard on my own experience - what saved me when others do not survive?

I found my answer as I listened to the long-awaited rain beat on my window and watched the trees sway back and forth in the wind, as if dancing with delight at the life-giving gift. In my mind I saw an oasis in the desert, and I knew that, through my own desert experience, my soul had known the oasis of Christ. When my mind and heart were beaten with despair it was to Jesus that my soul clung in desperation. He was there as love, in the words and presence of friends, in the words of Scripture, in the Eucharist. Can we save a person who sees death as the only road to peace? Maybe not. But there is hope within a relationship with Christ. And surely we can lead people to Christ. We only need one thing - the willingness to love.

It is in those moments of personal presence, of sacrificing self for the well-being of another, of holding a person's hand - and heart, that we make Christ present and move the journey of despair toward a life filled with faith, hope and love.

And the greatest of these is love.

___________________________________

Mary Morrell is the author of Angels in High Top Sneakers from Loyola Press; Things My Father Taught Me, a bi-weekly column that appears in several Catholic newspapers, I'll Walk With God, a monthly newsletter published by the Metuchen Diocesan Office of Religious Education, and Mary is a writer for Real Faith TV, produced by the Diocese of Trenton, Office of Communication.

Contact

Diocese of Metuchen
http://diometuchen.org NJ, US
Mary Morrell - associate director of the Office of Religious Education, 732 562-1990

Email

mmorrell@diometuchen.org

Keywords

love

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