On helping one another (from His Suffering and Our…
On helping one another (from His Suffering and Ours )
It’s almost universally true that the eye we turn toward ourselves is blind or obscured in some way, or the information we allow to reach it is filtered through our needs, our fears, our misconceptions. We cannot see the forest for the trees, must be reminded to remove the beam from our own eye before removing the speck in our neighbor’s, have adaged the imperative, “Know thyself.” Because we don’t.
If this is characteristic of our nature, it must be part of Your plan – even if it is only part of our fallen nature, as our fallenness is part of Your plan too! We do not really know ourselves wholly. Beyond that, we cannot judge ourselves (“neither do I judge my own self…but I am not thereby justified…” 1 Cor 4:3-4), and we cannot trust our own counsel (“…lean not on your own prudence… Be not wise in your own conceit” Prov 3:5). Why?
Because it is not Your will that we are completely self-sufficient. We are here for each other – to give to one another and to receive from one another. This is Your way in this world: to use us as instruments of Your love and truth. You reach through us to others, and through others to us; what we don’t always realize is that when we reach toward others, it is You we are seeking, and others are seeking You when they reach toward us. We are Your heart and Your hands in the world.
Of course, the clearer our connection with You is, the better conduits we are – we are channels of grace in proportion to how well we are in touch with the Source. But You use every good heart, even those with weak connections, because You are “ingenious to save.” You can use everything, everyone.
We are born needy and remain needy in many ways. We are physically born into a family of others, reborn into Your family (the Church) at Baptism, and destined for eternal communion. We are never solitary – even if we choose physical solitude, we remain part of a community of interdependence. There is no time or place at any point of our existence that we are ever really alone, and those who try to reject all communio are the most miserable souls alive. We are social beings, on every level.
We need each other physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. We cannot live, learn, laugh or love (those being the four corresponding actions to those four needs) if we are alone. We cannot fulfill our “eschatological vocation” on our own. We cannot be whole without other people. Still, why? Why are we always in need of guidance and support from outside of ourselves? Because mutual self-donation and mutual receptivity are the highest expression of our ontology. It IS what we ARE.
We are made to become gift. And this gift of self must be personal, even intimate. At a distance, we can rouse people, we can even impress them, but we cannot really impact them. We are changed by love, but we cannot love a crowd. Love is individual, personally affirming; it implies trust and vulnerability. We do not trust a crowd. A “group hug” is less effective than a handshake.
It’s a one-to-one interaction, a mutual trust, a generosity and selflessness, a willingness to reach out to a single soul, to put ourselves at risk or sacrifice our own wants for another that characterizes the communio personarum for which we’re made. And each interaction is unique and personal and (because it is touched by grace) sublime. We need each other to become our true selves.
Our difficulty with knowing ourselves (I say even our difficulty with becoming ourselves) and our inability to solve all our own problems insures that we keep reaching out to one another, inviting others to step beyond themselves for our sakes. You could have made us wiser, more self-sufficient, less interdependent. But our need for others maintains the law of mutual self-giving in spite of ourselves. We might otherwise convince ourselves that we are gods, that we need no one; worse, we might believe that no one needs us. But they do. We must take care of one another.
Our responsibility to one another in this aspect is great, so great that “he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law” (Rom 13:8)! How many times are we instructed to “love one another”?! It is our distinguishing characteristic – Your love in us and through us. Your insistence on this is so unwavering that we cannot live fully, cannot be whole, cannot know that we have such sublime potential unless we are loved. Unless our own goodness is revealed to us by another’s unconditional love, we cannot know ourselves at all.
There must be a relationship of trust (with even just one other person) in which we learn that we are lovable. We have to see it in their eyes, know that it is personal, know that it is a response to what we ARE, not what we do or provide, to learn that we are significant and good.
Then we are free to love in return. Then we are free to give ourselves fully for Your sake. You accept less than all of us, if it is all we are capable of giving, but a true civilization of love would free every soul to give itself utterly to another and to You because each person would know fully what they were giving! I can spend myself for others because I should, but I do so in a half-hearted way because I do not know myself, do not really know what I am capable of giving, and am not filled with love to give away because I am only half-capable of receiving love. But when I am loved by another, I learn Your love, learn how to be fully receptive to Your love, and am better equipped to give love in the form of self-donation.
Whole, we can give ourselves wholly.
So, others’ issues often seem clearer to us than our own, and we are perennially looking to others for support and affirmation. We are not self-sufficient because You want us to lean on one another, to learn Your own love for us. It is the way You have chosen to teach us that we are loved by Absolute Meaning, and that we possess intrinsic value as unique persons given the power to choose love of others over self.
Give us the grace to love as we should, to put others first and be freed to be loved in return.
“Since you have purified yourselves by obedience to the truth for sincere mutual love, love one another intensely from a pure heart.” -1 Peter
