We can feel lonely and unwanted from the time we're little. I saw the effects of this kind of loneliness and pain in a young man I met this past week.
I took a relative for her appointment at a counseling center. As soon as I entered the small waiting room, a young man in his thirties, dark-eyed, dark-haired, hawk nose, smiled at me and began to talk to me as soon as I sat down. He told me almost his whole life story as I sat there, one heart-rending and horrific episode after another. Growing up in a gang-ridden neighborhood in N.Y. C. At one time, participating in drug trafficking (he showed me his arms free of "tracks" because his "employers" would have killed him if he'd "used the product.") An abusive landlord in a poor neighborhood. A restraining order on him somewhere. At one point, he showed me the large hunting knife he keeps for self-defense. He talked so fast and continuously that I was not surprised when he told me that he was hyper-manic, yet he was there for his girl friend's appointment, not his. And there was the one little line, just slipped in there: "I was abused as a kid."
Abuse and neglect tell us we don't belong. That's never an excuse for the subsequent choices we make. But not belonging is always an underlying state of mind that can sabotage all our choices and our relationships, since it leaves an anger and lack of trust to fester in our souls. Sometimes just listening to someone can help alleviate this emptiness for at least a little while.
At one point, as I listened to the stranger at the counseling center, the young man said to me "You're a nice lady." I knew that by simple listening, I was giving him a space, a spiritual place, where he belonged. As he left, we shook hands.
"I'm Christian," he said.
"I'm Mary," I replied.
He laughed. "Both Biblical names!" He'd just read the New Testament.
"God bless you," I said, and I meant it. Christian continues to move and talk in and haunt a piece of my soul where I hold him and his girl friend in prayer. I know, even if they don't know it yet completely, that they belong to God.
Can anything be more important than being told, then believing, finally trusting, and then telling everyone who'll hear us, that we all belong to God? The psalms tell us to be joyful, to sing, because we belong to God. Belonging is the source of our security and our joy!
Belonging to God is being owned by God, but not in the way that we own things. For example, we can own a pair of pants or a dress that we can either throw out or put in a bag for Good Will or the Salvation Army if it rips or we outgrow it or grow tired of it. Because we belong to God, are owned by God, through a special, loving relationship, God doesn't "outgrow" us. God doesn't get rid of us when we outlive our "usefulness": when we get ripped and torn by problems or doubts or tragedies or traumas; when our skin crinkles wth old age; when we lose our minds because of dementia or drugs. God doesn't get tired of us in the way that we get tired of a favorite song or DVD or game, and move on to a new one. God says that we belong to Him forever, to be cherished by Him regardless of how we are wounded, soiled, or broken.
God says "I will love you with an everlasting love." The feeling of belonging to someone is born out of feeling loved. A child will feel he doesn't belong to a father who has never said "I love you;" a wife can feel that she doesn't belong to a husband who no longer wants to make love to her. If we feel secure, feel that we belong, we are overcome by such intense gratitude that we literally fall in love with that wondrous person whose words and actions tell us that we are the apple of his or her eye. We are the apple of God's eye! He chose to create us; He gave us His divine DNA, for our souls are drenched with His divinity and will live forever.
Do we look at other human beings and recognize that they belong to God? Because "belonging" does connote ownership. If someone belongs to another and we harm him or her, we have to answer to those they are in a primary relationship with. If we harm another, by abuse or even by indifference, the ultimate Person we will answer to is God.
Yet not only human beings belong to God. We hear in the Psalms that all creation belongs to God, for God created everything that was made. The sea belongs to Him, the dry land too, for it was formed by His hands. Whether we believe in evolution or not, God conceived of and began it all. Every time I pray over Creation in Morning Prayer, I shudder with shame and misgiving. We, sinfully, don't admit that creation is not ours to meddle with! What must God think of the way we have polluted our water, land, and air; the way we have abused and decimated our animals, insects, and green and growing things? What must God think of the unpalatable truth that we have so polluted water, soil, air, and food, that they can cause cancer and other diseases? What must God think of rational creatures who have so little conscience that we will hunt animal babies and animals sleeping in hibernation, for sport rather than food? That we are bringing species to the point of extinction? That we willfully turn our backs on clean energy?
Every time we forget that we belong to God, that every human being belongs to God regardless of age, race, religion, culture, or sexual orientation, that every part of creation belongs to God, we have lost track of the sacredness of all life. We have forgotten that we will face a Last Judgement during which God will ask us if we have lived as if everyone and everything is holy, imbued with the Presence of God. God will ask us if we remembered that everyone and everything is held in equal love in His heart. God doesn't love Catholics more than Protestants or Christians more than Muslims, Hindus, or Jews. Christians might consider themselves God's chosen people, but that doesn't mean Christians are superior; it means that we have received the fullness of the message that God took on human flesh to teach us that God loves us all - and that's a message that we are commissioned to share!
God has fallen in love with all of us and so decided that we belong to Him. God has fallen in love with us, which affects everything for Him: He keeps us alive at every moment; He literally died for us to give us new life. Once we hear this amazing message, do we fall in love with God? Famous Jesuit Pedro Arrupe, global Superior General of the Jesuits, and a role model for Pope Francis, shared this beautiful meditation with the world:
"Nothing is more practical then finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you will do with your evenings, how you will spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything."
Do you know, deep down, that you belong to God because God has fallen in love with you? Do you dare to take the risk to fall in love with God? If you do, love of God and belonging to God will, most assuredly, change everything.