Mis Amigos,
I’ve been thinking a lot about how I wanted to end my blog. I wanted to share with you all the thoughts that have been consuming me this summer. I find the only suitable thing to write about is love. I have come to see that a lot of Americans believe that the only way to really love the poor is to give them things. We have to be “fixing” their lives in some concrete way, accomplishing something. It is this American mentality of “do, do, do, accomplish, accomplish, accomplish.” We have to have something to show and say, “look at what I did, I built this house for this poor person." I am not trying to downplay the works of mercy and their importance; for it is our obligation to do everything we can to assist the poor in their physical needs. Yet often times, these things keep us a safe distance away from them, from the ways they may affect us. We have to remember that if these things are not done with love they might as well not be done at all. We are so afraid to love, aren't we? We are much more comfortable building a house for a poor person than talking to them, loving them. Yet, Mother Teresa said that the greatest thing we can give the poor is not our food or possessions, but our love. The Missioners of Christ are not about finding a quick solution to poverty (which doesn’t exist)—they instead ask us to love the people in whatever way we can (and often that was through meeting their physical needs) and walk alongside them.
Yet I had to ask myself, what does this all mean? I now understand what it means to say that to love the poor is to love the Christ crucified. How long can you stare at Christ on the cross without your heart aching, out of guilt, out of sorrow? It is the same when you look into the eyes of the poor. I realized that this summer I was very afraid to actually love the people. Why? Because in order to love the poor you have to allow your heart to bleed for them. If any of you have ever truly loved a person, you know that it is the most painful thing you will ever do. I'm sure many of you know what it feels like for your heart to actually break for another. Mother Teresa also said that if it doesn’t hurt, then it isn’t really love. What a contradiction that is to our culture! In a culture which is both “love” obsessed and doing everything in it’s power to avoid pain and heart ache, in a culture in which 50% of marriages fail, and a ridiculous amount of people are on anti-depressants. Are we not seeing a people who are running as far away from pain and therefore love as they possibly can?
I am very guilty of this. Before I came to Honduras, I of course, thought about loving the poor in a very cutesy, idealistic way. I didn’t think about the fact that if I were to love them, I would need to actually open up my heart to another person and allow myself to feel their pain. I’m not saying that we should completely take on the pain of another, because first of all we are not capable of this, but also, the minute we do this, we are not allowing Christ to be Savior. We must lay their pain directly at the foot of the cross. But at the same time, we are called, as the scriptures say, “to love one another deeply from the heart” (1Peter 1:22) and to “carry each others burdens” (Galations 6:2). If we want to be a Christian, and therefore imitators of Christ, that means we are called to love even to the extent of the pain of the cross—or if we are to love Mary, the mother of God, that means we will also experience her suffering, her heart pierced with a sword out of her deep love for us and her son. I know that I didn’t love people this summer to my fullest extent, out of fear of the heartache it would cause me, and this is my biggest regret.
I have a challenge for all of you. Go meet Christ in the poor. Just go. Don’t think about it too much. It is the most natural thing you will ever do. It is also ridiculously fun. He is waiting for you. You will never be the same again. Not only that, but it is truly your obligation, all of our obligations, to love in whatever way we can our poorest brothers and sisters, to give until it hurts, not out of our excess or free time, but out of true sacrificial love. Just as the poor widow who gave everything she had was admired and the rich who gave much more than her were scorned—God does not appreciate us giving just out our excess. This is not love. It has to hurt in some way. We shouldn’t serve the poor because we believe we are entitled to this kind of experience, or so that we can come back and so, “I am so grateful for all the things I have now.” No! We don’t need all the things we have, and neither do they. Consumerism is destroying us. I see how it has taken over and destroyed aspects of my own life. As Americans, it is so difficult to wrap our minds around, but we have to remember that the poorest people in this world know the love of Christ in a way that most of us will never be able to understand; they don’t need our pity or surplus, but our love and sincere admiration. I am trying desperately to never let go of this belief.
My other challenge for you is to accept that human relationships in which pain and sacrifice are absent don’t exist. If they do exist, they are meaningless. What I loved most about the Hondurans was their transparency; they were real. They loved more freely than most people I know, even though they had many more reasons not to. We have enough sugar coating in our culture, enough artificiality. We have to be real, to love until it hurts! This is a challenge I give both to you and especially to myself. I know it is immensely difficult, and I am right alongside you saying “how.” I don’t know. It will look different for everyone, but the result will be the same—our hearts will all break at one point or another. But is there anything else worth doing? I am not saying we should love recklessly, rather truly and fully, in the way God is asking of us individually. All I know is that if God is love, the solution to everything is more love. I can’t explain how grateful I am, to whoever read this, for your prayers and support. I will be discerning whether I am called to do missionary work for long term in the future, so I would appreciate your continued prayer. Thank you for putting up with my lack of originality. I am convinced that the most difficult things to grasp though, are also the simplest. I love you all.
En Cristo,
Angie
“There is a terrible hunger for love.
We all experience that in our lives - the pain, the loneliness.
We must have the courage to recognize it.
The poor you may have right in your own family.
Find them.
Love them.” –Mother Teresa
“The deepest lesson the heart has to deliver to us become accessible only when it is ruptured. It is anguish that makes the heart an open book because the wound it causes pierces all the way through to the core. These are terrible lessons, the kind that fill one with nausea. We like to think our lives would be happier if we could find a way to avoid learning them; but the only way to avoid learning them; the only way to do that is to close one's heart and keep it closed, so that nothing gets in or out of it - to make oneself a heart of stone. It is terrible to put into words the one real alternative to this avoidance. But I see no way to get around what seems to be the harshest, the most merciless truth about the human heart- I mean the fact that, to keep it open, once it has been pierced, one must allow it to be an open wound.”-Jerome Miller.
"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”
-C.S. Lewis
P.S.- I have quoted Mother Teresa a lot this summer. I feel she was right alongside all of us missioners this summer. If you want to get to know her, I would really recommend you read “Come Be My Light.” All of the summer missioners read it and I can’t explain the impact it had on all of us. It is not just another book written about her..it is her private letters she didn't want anyone to see because of her humility, and it will bring you to your knees.
