Catholic Influence

"And in the end, we were all just humans...drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal or brokenness"
F.Scott Fitzgerald

This is one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's quotes that really highlights the lasting influence that his Catholic upbringing, and education had on his writing. Like so many great artists, his work was forever influenced by his early experiences with Catholicism. And to a Catholic, this quote rings with truth. If you read 1 John 4:8 ( Whoever does not love, does not know God, because God is love). We're told quite explicitly that God is love. God is the only person who can heal our brokenness, who can come into our hearts and remove the scars and wounds left there. God died on the cross to save us from sin and death, and when we grow closer to God, He heals us off our pride and selfishness, our lust and all of our shortcomings.In the beautiful sacrament of reconciliation God heals our souls of the wounds caused by our sins.

To truly and authentically love, means to wish the best for another. We have no better example of what it means to love those around us than the cross. In the crucifixion, we see the greatest act of love the world will ever know. And all around us, we're constantly seeing how greatly people desire real and authentic love. From songs like "I just need somebody to love" to  "Not a Bad Thing", and movies such as "The Notebook", we see a culture that is desperately seeking, and crying out for real love, but looking in all of the wrong places.

Instead of going to God, the source of all love, we look to sex, porn, and drugs instead. We settle for cheap imitations of love, when the real deal is right there. It's like settling for Crocs, when we could have Gucci. All God wants is to love each and everyone of us. He cries out to us constantly in the midst of our hurt and confusion, begging us to come into His arms, and to allow Him to heal our deepest wounds. We have a culture that is starved for want of love, and doesn't know that love won't be found in a one night stand, or in all the money in the world. None of the worldly things we have available to us will ever come close to filling the gnawing emptiness in our hearts, a space that only God can fill.

Where we as Christians come into all of this is we are called as disciples to go out and radically love those around us. We are called to be the light of the world. That doesn't mean only allowing our light to shine once a week at church, it means bringing it out to those around us, and sharing the source of our light, or joy, the source of the love we share. We need to share with our world where to find real love. If you want to find real love, look no further than your nearest tabernacle; love will be right there waiting.