Loving the "Loveless"

There is an age old saying, “Assuming makes an ass out of you and me.”

It’s so true it hurts. Yet here we are, in a society that is based entirely off of assumptions. These assumptions are based on stereotypical depictions of the labels we force people to identify themselves with each and every day. We assume that gender, race, and socioeconomic status defines the way someone lives their life, and we don’t stop ourselves from doing so.

Yes, labels are informative, but they disassemble the person before us, rendering them powerless.

Let’s use an analogy to look at the issue we have caused ourselves by allowing labels to define a person’s life: a car.

Each part of a car is important. Some folks might think that the best way to understand the way a car works is to take the engine apart, piece by piece, until each piece is described in great detail. However, now that the engine is sitting in a disassembled heap on the garage floor, the car is unable to drive.

We make it impossible for people to move forward when we allow ourselves to detail their labels.

I have written about this idea before, but one of these labels has become more and more relevant over the course of the past year.

Faith.

I cannot describe how many times I have heard someone say, “Oh you’re Catholic so you…” fill in the blank. There are so many different assumptions made about my life, my political affiliations, and my ability to truly love other people.

But it’s not just Catholicism that is treated this way. Every single faith tradition, or lack thereof, is met with numerous assumptions, many of which disassemble the person before us. We make faith or lack of faith a piece of a person, and we base their belief system solely off of what the world describes their beliefs as.

Thus terms like “cultural Catholicism” come out, and we blindly accept the implications of making faith just another piece of the culture.

Faith is not a culture.

Faith is personal.

Because I am Catholic, I am going to speak from the Catholic perspective. I know that we are not the only faith tradition that experiences “cultural” faith, but I cannot accurately describe the lives of those who come from different spiritual backgrounds.

With each Mass, I see more and more glazed over expressions in the Eucharistic prayers. It wasn’t until I lived with a liturgical scholar that I realized that the prayers changed with the seasons more than I knew. Even with my active prayer life, I still missed some of the most beautiful prayers I have ever heard. Here’s an example.

“It is truly right and just that we should give you thanks and praise, O God, almighty Father, for all you do in this world, through our Lord Jesus Christ. For though the human race is divided by dissension and discord, yet we know that by testing us you change our hearts to prepare them for reconciliation. Even more, by your Spirit you move human hearts that enemies may speak to each other again, adversaries may join hands, and peoples seek to meet together. By the working of your power it comes about, O Lord, that hatred is overcome by love, revenge gives way to forgiveness, and discord is changed to mutual respect.” ~Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation II

2000 years of rich history, and yet we chalk Catholicism up to a piece of our culture.

Faith becomes a routine thing we do, and it starts to lose value. So much in fact that the cultures that claim a particular faith tradition go against their beliefs completely.

On a more grand scale, Ireland claims cultural Catholicism, meaning that the Faith informs the culture. Yet this past week they voted for the legalization of abortion, which is in direct contradiction to the Faith. However, this is not the point of this post, so I will simply state this as an example of how a cultural definition of faith as opposed to a personal definition of faith is detrimental not only to the person, but to society as a whole.

Faith is not a culture.

Faith is personal.

Most of us do not want to take ownership of our faith. It’s not because we don’t think about the concept of believing in something. Every human soul encounters the concept of God, and each soul has the opportunity to either accept Him or deny Him. That’s free will.

However, we choose to make belief something we do as opposed to something we are.

Why?

Because we can get hurt.

You may have heard the phrase Dear Reader, “your faith is about your personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” There is no denying that Jesus of Nazareth was a real person who had a real impact on the world. I’ve read a few books, such as The Case for Christ, which also make a strong case for His resurrection. However, the Paschal Mystery wherein Jesus Christ came to Earth to die for our sins is still a matter of faith.

However, to make an act of faith on the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world means that you have to accept arguably the most popular Bible verse.

“For God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life.” ~John 3:16

God so loved the world.

In order to profess this faith, you have to believe that someone loves you. Not just anyone, but the God of the Universe, the Creator, an intangible being that we cannot see in this life. As a romantic, I know that it is difficult to open your heart up to someone. Yet when it comes to Christianity, I have to believe in a person I cannot see. I have to believe that He loves me specifically.

Love is not trivial.

Love is personal.

To love someone is to know them. You cannot truly know someone just by listening to stories about them. How many times have you met someone your friends have described and discovered that there is infinitely more to them than what you heard before? So too it is with Christ. Just like the aforementioned mutual friend, you actually have to spend time with Jesus in order to actually understand who He is, and at the same time, understand His love for you.

You grow in love for others by being with them and sharing unique experiences with them.

No relationship is the same.

So if faith is personal, then each person of faith must find the love of Jesus on their own. Just as every relationship on Earth is unique and special, so too is each relationship with Jesus. That’s why we cannot say that faith is cultural, nor can we make blind assumptions about every person of faith.

Mass should not be boring, nor should conversations about faith be combative.

Faith is about love, deep personal love that is found in each and every soul.

I have written quite a bit about the “God so loved the world” portion of John 3:16, but the second half is just as important. “So that everyone who believes in Him” in particular. Part of loving a person, which is what we of faith are called to do, is loving what our beloved loves. For Christians, we must love every person that Jesus loves.

Do you see the catch?

Jesus Christ does not just love His people, but every single soul He has ever created. 

Whether they believe in Him or not, He chose to get on the Cross and die for them. You see, if we love Jesus and take our faith as personal and not cultural, then we will not need to worry about the labels we put on other people. 

“I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. These also I must lead, and they will hear My voice, and there will be one flock, one shepherd. This is why the Father loves Me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again.” ~John 10:16-17

It doesn’t matter what someone’s faith label is because each and every soul on Earth is worthy of love. Faith is a question of whom we love, not what we can and cannot do. Faith is a question of how we love, not what we thing is good. Faith is a question of the heart, not the mind.

I have been told numerous times that I need to stop spending so much time loving those who do not share my faith tradition.

I used to be like that. I used to believe that if a soul does not accept my faith that there is something fundamentally wrong with their soul. Then, as I was introduced to numerous beautiful souls filled with love, I discovered that there is absolutely nothing wrong with their soul. What was wrong was how I refused to love them as Christ does every day.

Everyone is worthy of true love.

We cannot encounter God without an encounter with love in its purest form. That love is sacrifice. That love is scary. That love is a risk, and we are likely to die to ourselves for the sake of love for another soul. Until we recognize that each soul is worthy of a deeply personal and unique love, we will not be able to overcome cultural faith, and conversations about religion will continue to be a battle.

But if we see love in others…

Maybe then Heaven wouldn’t feel so far away.

My faith may appear to be strong, and it may appear that I know many things. However, I know barely anything about Catholicism outside of the basics. What I do know about is the Communion of Saints, which is a Heavenly Family which extends through Heaven and Earth in love.

I know love.

Where did I find love?

As a young child, my parents taught me that Jesus is in the heart of every person I encounter. They did not want us to get in the wrong crowds, of course, but they wanted each Newton child to love their neighbor with all of their heart. As I grew up, I started to discover that piece of God in every person I met.

But you know where I see God the most in a human heart?

In those who believe that do not have His love and in those who share His love with everyone.

You see, many of us with faith fake it so as to keep up with the culture. Yet when someone takes faith as personal, there is something different about their demeanor. They go to all people, and they spend time loving each person individually. When we make faith about our love for Jesus, then we become more real.

But what about the “loveless souls?”

They are real my Dear Readers. The souls who do not believe that God loves them or that He could love anyone are genuine. What is so special about these souls is not that they are against our God. It is that God is still with them, protecting them and loving them.

You see, even the souls who reject Jesus still have hope in something. They still believe in love.

When I fell in love with Jesus I fell in love with each heart He made. As such, I started to listen to those who do not know Jesus Christ personally. With each heartbreaking story, all I could hear was how the Holy Spirit held their heart as tightly as He could. All I could see was how immensely loved this soul must be if the God of the Universe allowed them to continue to believe in hope and love without even believing in the One who is love.

I will never know if the souls I have loved for Christ will ever know His name.

But I do know that I love Him all the more because of them.

Ignoring Love

How do you love someone?

Most of the self-help websites and books and podcasts and videos all start with the same idea: get to know them first. The problem is that we think we are getting to know a person, when in reality, we are not getting any closer to the real person at all.

We start with what’s on the surface. We start by seeing what they want us to see. Our Instagram accounts are all perfectly tailored to the type of people we know our audiences to be. Our twitter handles only let out our golden jokes or greatest pet peeve’s. Our Facebook feed contains our favorite pictures, our favorite memes, our favorite things. More often than not, the surface is all the stuff you would want someone to know about you.

We all know it’s not real.

Yet we start here with the, “getting to know a person” stage of any relationship.

However, once we look at these baseline things, we make a snap judgment over if we should consider communicating further with this person or not. We decide that we are their friend based solely off of their likes and dislikes, their religious and political affiliations, their absence or presence on certain social media platforms.

That is not growing in love of a person.

That is just confirming the love of oneself.

So how do we get to know someone? How do we actually see the real person and love them?

Let’s start with the purest form of love, the simplest form of a relationship, one that can’t be created through following or friending someone on the Internet.

A new-born baby.

I’ll never forget the day my siblings and I gathered around my little sister Penelope. She is the youngest sibling, and she was born in Nashville just a few months after our move. I had been trying to make a connection to my new home over and over, but nothing seemed to really fit. Mass was nice, but I wasn’t a Daily Mass go-er yet. I was grasping at straws to find something I could share in my new home.

Of course I had my family. I am not discrediting their importance in this new location. However, we were all trying to adjust to our new home. We all needed to help one another. It was good, but it was still difficult.

Then Penelope was born.

Penelope had nothing to give. She could not form an opinion on the best Disney Princess. She could not be a dog person or a cat person. She could not tell me what music she liked, let alone talk to me at all. Penelope was helpless, small, and sweet. There was no telling what she could become.

And yet, Penelope gave all she had, what all of us have from the moment we are conceived.

Love.

Babies appear to have nothing to give. However, because they cannot be judged by what the world makes them out to be, they can only be themselves, which is not a whole lot at first. They don’t know who they are. They know physical pain. They know hunger. They know the basic parts of life.

But they do not know hate.

All they have is love, and that is all they can give.

This ability to love and be loved is part of every human being. So often we look at the labels, the ideas, the opinions of others and decide that these things make it impossible for them to love us. We think that it makes it impossible to love them. However, every single person was born with nothing to give but love.

When we give love, we give joy and purpose and peace. I will never forget the smiles and happy tears in the room where Penelope met Team Newton for the first time. We had been waiting for her for nine months, and now she was finally there. The family was even more complete.

Maybe we should start treating others like we were waiting for them too.

Maybe we should start talking to people like they have nothing to give except love.

We all want to be loved. Even if we are blessed with joyful and love-filled lives, we always are in need of love. Until we reach the source of love, there will never be enough love on this Earth. Therefore, when we encounter another human being, we have the opportunity to love and be loved like we always wanted.

There are so many tragedies going on right now. I think it’s because we’ve lost sight of what love truly is.

Love is recognizing the dignity of the human person and promoting the welfare of that person. 

It does not often give us anything in return, but rather it serves an even greater purpose. Love is exponential. This indescribable gift goes out of ourselves and transforms more lives than we can ever predict. These lives then go out in love to all of the other people they encounter. In time, the love comes back to us. The love does not look the same, but we know in our hearts that this love came back to us, not because of our love, but because we are worthy of love.

We live in a world where lives are considered waste. We disregard the fact that each life is important and can do anything. We disregard the fact that each human being is molded by the world they are a part of, and we disregard the fact that every single person we turn away has no more love to give than they had before.

We are ignoring love because we want something for ourselves. We ignore people because the surface level of getting to know someone is based off of our own desires.

A person is more than their profile. A person is more than what people say about them. A person is infinite and worthy of love.

It’s not just the guns that are taking away our safety. It’s not just the abortions that are causing our problems. It’s not just the wars that are making religions intolerable. It’s not just sexuality that is making us feel lonely. It’s not just walls that are tearing us apart.

It’s this one simple fact:

We are ignoring love.

Until we are willing to accept that every life has value, more value than what it appears to have at the current moment, we will never be able to stop the bleeding. Until we let people live as they were made to live, we will never know what good can come from these souls.

A baby has nothing to give but love.

But love is what the world needs.

I can’t say that this world is perfect, or even completely safe for that matter. What I can say is that we have to stop living for ourselves. We need to start looking at people like we look at a newborn baby. Not with patronizing and childish faces, but with hope for the future. We were all born with unconditional love, and that is not something we can lose.

How do you love someone?

Believe. 

Believe that every person has potential for greatness. No matter how old they are. No matter how much money they have in the bank. No matter their race. No matter their gender identity. No matter how much time is left until they are born or how much time is left until they die. 

No matter what it is that you think is worth avoiding love for…stop and believe in that person.

Because love should not be ignored.

I Don't Know

I don’t know.

Period.

For some reason, we all seem to think that we need to add something to “I don’t know.” We think we need to give a justification for not knowing something. Whether it be why something went wrong, where we are supposed to go, how we feel, whatever really…we all think that there needs to be a justification for not knowing.

The feeling to explain ourselves only gets worse when someone points out what we don’t know.

One of the hardest lessons to teach a young scientist is teaching them that it is ok to say that they don’t know something. Of course we don’t have all of the answers yet; science is all about answering questions experimentally. If an experiment has not been done yet, then the answer does not exist.

And that’s ok.

Actually, it’s exciting when we don’t have an answer. It means that there is more to come.

Of course, there is a caveat to this. You can’t just say “I don’t know,” and move on. You also should not justify why you do not have the answer. Instead, we train young scientists to do something else.

First, acknowledge that there is not a definite answer.

Second, share what you do know.

Third, make a hypothesis based on what you know.

Fourth, test that hypothesis so you are ready for the next talk.

Now this is not just about research question sessions. It’s about life. We all have moments where we find ourselves not knowing something. We all find ourselves backed in to a corner by reality, and we have to own up to what is to come. We don’t have an answer. We don’t know what to say.

Even the smallest question, like, “where are you going next?” can throw us for a loop.

That’s ok.

What we have to do is exactly what my students have to do. Acknowledge that you do not know yet, and own up to it. Then, take a moment and look around at what you already have planned. Then, once you have collected yourself, plan the next step. Make it small and make it feasible. Then, with your miniature plan in front of you, try to accomplish that little goal. Life is not meant to be figured out, and we can only take small steps towards finding what we are called to do.

All the while, trust in God, the One who made the plan from the beginning.

I know that that is hard to do, especially when life seems to be nothing more than a blur. However, if we trust God to be with us in each little step, it is easier to trust that He will help us move towards the bigger and better parts of His plan. It’s ok if you are struggling to trust Him in the big moments right now.

Trust Him in the little things, and in time, you will trust Him with the big things. I promise. I’ve been there too.

Science is slow. It takes many years and many small steps to answer a big question.

So too is The Spirit. He takes many years and many small moments to lead us to our vocation.

With a deep breathe, I looked in to the microscope. My newest mentee sat on my right, hand poised to click “Live,” my senior mentee sat at her desk in the back, ready but not expecting me to get her if we saw anything exciting. Today was the day we used a new cholesterol analogue, one that only added a bond to a single ring, one that would show us once and for all what happened when cholesterol entered the cell.

“No way!” I nearly screamed. My mentee clicked on the computer to see what I saw. We gasped as we watched little purple dots sliding along thin tubular structures. Cholesterol was in lysosome tubules.

I screamed and ran down the hall in my tall black wedges to grab my senior mentee. Our newest grad student rushed along with us.

There, both the old and the new phases of our lab stood together, huddled in a little dark room, shivering from the fan, pointing over and over again at the little purple dots moving through the plane. It was dim, yes, but it was real. As I let each person look in to the microscope, I took a step back and took in the moment.

In the midst of an ending, I saw a beginning.

I saw forever.

As my Dear Readers know very well by now, my lab facilitated my grow as a scientist and as a person. My mentee taught me how friendship could be fostered in a lab and how such friendships allow for the “unhappy phase” to survive. Together, we helped train the new members of the lab, helped them become the new beginning I saw before me in the imaging room that day. My youngest mentee had overcome adversity and became brave through the little acts of my senior mentee, and now we would work together to build the project my senior would be leaving behind.

The Spirit moved slowly, quietly, and when I was ready, I was able to see my forever in the finite.

That’s how life is my Dear Readers. We live in finite moments so as to reach infinity. However, because The Spirit is moving through our world at every moment of every day, we are given small gifts, small moments, small inspirations that bring us to forever. It is not until the moment has passed that we realize just how much God has done for us.

We would never know that it was happening.

By saying, “I don’t know,” we allow The Spirit to enter our lives and teach us what God knows.

The next day I described the experiment to my advisor. I told him about the fluorescent cholesterol, and I could see the joy in his face. Then his face went dark and he looked at his hands.

“I asked the chemistry department to make this analogue two years ago, not too long before you joined,” he explained, “I wish they had told me about that sooner. Then we might have seen this earlier.”

My heart burned. Then it started to beat quickly as I spoke.

“I don’t think we could have seen this if I didn’t have to do all of those other experiments, all of those readings, and all of the other assays for the past two years. How would we have known that cholesterol would matter if we didn’t come upon the Japanese Patient? How would we have known the time point if I didn’t become so obsessed with one silly paragraph from the cover paper of Cell on the day I was born? How would we know when the tubule would shoot out, the concentration, or anything if it were not for all of the work Shannon and I did every day, under the radar?”

“If it were not for all of those little, seemingly unimportant pieces, then we would not have seen this,” I finished.

Dear Reader, every moment of our lives is like an experiment. We do not know what will happen. However, when we accept that we do not have all of the answers, when we take what we do know, and when we try our best, then The Spirit moves us to where we are meant to go.

Even if these litle moments seem unimportant, know that each second of your life matters.

Unseen, The Spirit moves through and in us. Unseen, The Spirit gives us love to spare. Unseen, our love compells us forward. Unseen, we take a step towards forever.

Trust in that Dear Reader.

Trust in the Unseen yet All-Powerful Spirit.

He has the answers. He knows all things, and He loves all things. All that we have to do is accept that we do not have the answers. All we have to do is stop expecting an answer, stop expecting an easy way out, stop expecting people to understand where we are going or what we are doing or whom we are loving.

Stop expecting things.

Start expecting love.

You will not be disappointed.

You Found Forever!

Some of my Dear Readers may be wondering why I haven’t posted in a while. To be honest, I have been a bit distracted as of late. What with finals, research, and other such things, my mind has been bouncing around from place to place.

It’s just the nature of the season.

Spring is both a time of beginnings and of endings, and for the first time since arriving at Notre Dame, there seem to be more endings than beginnings. My first real friend here, my mentee, is graduating. The first place at Notre Dame where I felt like I completely belonged, my Confirmation class, is no longer a part of my life. My classes are over for the rest of my life. 

To respond, I found many new things. I started playing DnD. I made a huge leap forward in my research. I started writing again.

Here are some of the thoughts I’ve had. I pray that they might end up coherent.

Time is a funny thing. We live in finite moments, and yet we also live in infinity. We leave places, and we remain there also. We forget faces, and we remember moments in solitude. Although we of Faith know that there is such a thing as forever, we fail to see that forever in our endless stream of goody-byes and hello’s.

It seems as though the limited time we have left will take away our friends, our loves, our enemies even. That is not so.

You see, Jesus said, “I should not lose anything of what He  gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day.” Jesus does not lose us; He holds us close in The Sacrament, and we are never lost to Him. No matter how far the world feels, no matter how silent God seems to be, no matter what, Jesus holds you in The Blessed Sacrament. 

Therefore, when we see Him, there our hearts shall be.

You have found forever! 

Forever is in Heaven. Forever is in Jesus. Forever is The Sacrament, where all of the souls we love are present, whether we see them or not.  Our hearts know this, but the fears of this life have masked the clarity of our soul’s vision. It’s scary when we cannot see. It’s scary when we cannot hear. All the same, you have a safe place to rest. Close to The Sacrament, Jesus will show you forever.

Before the Blessed Sacrament, our souls are joined with all of Heaven, with all of eternity.

Before the Blessed Sacrament, our souls can love anyone, no matter where they are.

How does a soul love? There is a probably more accurate answer with theological reasoning, but I will share all I know. In my experience, a soul loves another through prayer. You see, our souls are a reflection of Christ, and it is Christ revealed in a person that our souls love. Therefore, when are with our Jesus in prayer, our souls love at their greatest capacity.

Maybe that’s why Catholics are a little different.

We are loved every moment of every day by every soul that we have ever shared love with.

We know the joy of forever.

We are all Children of God. We suffer. We ache. We get lonely. All these things are a part of life. However, whenever a Child of God remembers forever, the Saints and the Angels fly to them. When a Child of God attends Mass and remembers their Heavenly Family, both on Earth and in Heaven, they are able to rest.

No matter how many endings we have to experience, we know that there is a purpose.

Endings bring us closer to Home, closer to forever.

There is nothing to fear when we have forever in our hands. In His wisdom, God granted us all of the tools we need to build His kingdom here: faith, hope, and love.

What have we to lose in love? Nothing. What have we to lose in hope? Nothing. What have we to lose in Faith? Nothing. There is nothing to lose and everything to gain because faith, hope, and love will always win. To have forever is to know that we do not have to fear losing love, losing Jesus, because no one can touch us.

However, it is really easy to forget forever.

It is easy to forget that no matter what it means to be a part of the Mystical Body of Christ, what it means to be loved every moment of every day, no matter what you have done or where you are.

I forgot my forever at the end of last year when my Novena failed and my family felt far away.

That’s why Jesus gives us friends. Friendships allow us to experience love, and it is this love that reminds us of forever. It is love that brings us Home. We experience this gift in two ways: through our bodies and through our souls.

My lab reminded me of forever. Whether they had already graduated or were an active member of the lab, I never felt like I couldn’t talk about Eggo Waffles, STARD9, or wear my sunglasses indoors. They reminded me that when we are doing what we are called to do that we are fully alive on this Earth.

Then I got my new Cell Team, a trio of faithful students. They lived their faith, and they reminded me that when we do what we are made to do, when we choose love over hate, when we grow instead of hide, that all is well in the end.

I can never thank my labmates enough for bringing Heaven to the basement of Galvin.

My Confirmation group encouraged me to spend more time before the Blessed Sacrament. There I started to pray for souls I hardly knew in person, and yet I could pray for them with ease. I never really thought that I would become close with any of these people, but in His loving kindness, God entrusted a piece of my heart to them. Not my whole heart, not the deepest part, but the part that needed healing.

Jesus introduced me to souls that I didn’t know, but I could love.

Then I had hands to hold in Mass, and at long last, my soul was at rest.

My Dear Readers, no matter how well I know you, no matter how you have come to this blog, know that I love you. Know that even though an ending comes that it is only a way to find forever. All endings have a purpose. All beginnings have an ending to thank.

But love is forever.

In The Blessed Sacrament, you will find what you are missing, whom you are missing, where you missing.

Should you ever forget that you are a part of forever, that there is a reason for all things, that you are loved, I encourage you to remember the souls who loved you. Then go to the chapel, gaze upon the Sacrament, and reflect on these words:

“I see you in the Mass, and I’ll never forget you.

I hear you in Scripture, and I’ll never fear your silence.

I love you in your Cross, and I’ll love you forever.”