Donna, ever enterprising, also is going to use a DNA test to discover the different racial/ethnic strands of our immediate family - Donna, our sister Linda, and me. We're especially interested because my mother's mother said at one time that way back a few generations, there is a Mohawk Native American who is part of our family. I'm also wondering if, on my father's side, there are any Greeks because his family came from Calabria, which is part of Magna Graecia.
If anything gives meaning to our lives, it is the love of family. These special people can be family by blood, or what I'd call "family by desire" - adopted or extended family or friends who are "like family" - people who mutually "adopt" each other as mother, father, sister, brother, child - because there is a connection between them, hard to put into words, but very real. Each person is remarkable, a unique piece of the complicated jigsaw puzzle that is our lives.
Love itself cannot be statistically measured, seen, heard, touched, tasted - but its influence is universally felt. Love's power - like a mighty gust of wind, or tender as a subtle breeze, - can change everything for us. Which is why I believe that God is Love Itself.
Yet, all of us know that our lives can change in the blink of an eye. And, when we lose a much-loved and loving someone, very precious and necessary for our happiness and well-being, what happens to our perception of our life's meaning? Do we fall into despair? Do we decide that life is absurd and meaningless? Do we decide that it's time to opt out of misery and become an addict? Do we feel as if it were better if we hadn't been born? Do we lose our faith that God exists? I understand this raw questioning very well. I lost a forty year old son three years ago. My husband found a priest friend dead, a suicide. Our daughter recently had a mastectomy, chemo, and radiation.
In the twenty-first century humans across the globe live with so many threats to our lives, our families and friends, our happiness. Life-threatening illness. Ruthless terrorism. Outrageous injustice. Starvation and abuse. Wars that send people into flight as refugees. Increasing persecution of Christians. Devastating natural catastrophes. In "Mercy: the Essence of the Gospel," Cardinal Walter Kasper observes "In light of this situation, it is difficult for many people to speak of an all-powerful God who is simultaneously just and merciful.....People ask, 'isn't all of this unjust suffering the strongest argument against belief in a God who is omnipotent and merciful?"
Others have difficulty believing in a God because they only believe in scientific, empirical facts as being real. In other words, if you can't see it under a microscope, touch it, smell it, hear it, or taste it - it's a delusion, it doesn't exist. Today, many live their lives as if God doesn't exist. Some even seem to live quite well.
We may decide that God can't possibly exist because of all the suffering in our lives, or in the world. We may decide that God doesn't exist because we can't scientifically "prove" God's existence. But we still, as human beings, can't seem to stop searching for meaning in our lives. Those who don't believe in God are often searchers for truth and pilgrims, feeling as if something is missing in their lives, a loss of orientation, a spiritual poverty because of experiences of meaninglessness.
Yet, as searchers for truth often discover, only the existence of God, only the belief in the truth that God created everyone and everything purposefully with immense love and for a reason, and that every life has inestimable worth - only that truth gives all lives and life itself meaning. Quite simply, we limited human beings need more than ourselves, even more than other human beings or fulfilling jobs, to fill the endless void inside ourselves and give us purpose. We need a sense of Someone greater than ourselves, Who has created a vast jigsaw puzzle of existence in which all who live and have lived are valuable pieces and everyone is Family, with Divine DNA.
Cardinal Kasper says "Without the question about meaning and without hope, we revert back to being resourceful animals, which can find enjoyment only in material things. But then everything becomes dreary and banal. No longer to pose at all the question about meaning means giving up the hope that there will once again be justice. In that case, however, the violent criminal would be in the right and the murderer would have triumphed over his innocent victim."
If we've lost our faith, we become adrift. We've lost our faith in the only Power - Love - that can revive us and warm our hearts. "Where faith in God evaporates, it leaves behind...a void and an unending coldness. Without God we are completely and hopelessly handed over to worldly fate, chance, and the impulses of human history. Without God, there is no longer an authority to which one can appeal. Without God there is no longer any hope for ultimate meaning and final justice." (Kasper.)
To believe is to believe in the power of love, the reality of love, the truth of love, in Love Itself Who is God. God, Love, alone can fill the void within us. The Resurrection of Jesus, who is Love Incarnate, and the promise of our personal resurrection, is proof for those who have the eyes of faith to see that this world and this flesh of ours has eternal significance for God. God Who is love promises to love us into eternal life, so we can participate eternally in God's Divine Life. And resurrection begins here, in time, in all those lovely moments of graced time with those who are family and like family for us, as God present in each moment flows among us and between us, putting all pieces of meaning together to form a mysterious Whole.
In this world, if our gaze is enlightened by faith, we can begin to see wholeness. Fr. Richard Rohr says "When time comes to a fullness,' (e.g..Mark 1:15)... as in moments of love, childbirth, union, death, prayer or exquisite beauty, you have experienced a moment of eternal life." He continues:
"The Risen Christ....is the pledge and guarantee of what God will do with all of our oppressions, abuses, and crucifixions. This, frankly, allows us to live with hope, purpose, and direction. It is no longer an absurd or tragic universe. Our hurts now become the home for our greatest hopes. Without such implanted hope, it is likely that we will be cynical, bitter, and tired by the second half of our lives. I am afraid this is much of Western civilization, which feels very tired and even in love with futility and death. The amount of mental and emotional illness, addiction, anger, depression, and basic unhappiness is the price we are paying for living in such an empty and meaningless world. THE SOUL CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT PURPOSE AND MEANING."