As I was watching the OC the other day (laugh if you want to, that's fine. And yes I do mean this television show) I was reflecting upon the interactions that we have with one another and on the way that we live our faith. Yes, as crazy as it might sound to those of you who (possibly rightfully) hate that show, even in its often misconstrued idea of morality the OC has taught me a lot about what it means to be a person and what it means to be a Christian. This time, what I was reflecting on was the importance that one person can have in the lives of another. In this show, for those of you unfamiliar, one person comes into the lives of a whole bunch of others through what seems like random chance (clearly we know better) and completely changes each one of them. While this one person has his own issues and idiosyncrasies and sometimes causes problems, his presence in the lives of those he encounters is overall a positive presence. Seeing how Ryan Atwood (this guy) affects the lives of all of these people whom he came to know simply because he ended up in jail (I'm not kidding) made me think of the way that the Lord uses others to speak to me and me to speak to others. Scary, yes. Encouraging, yes. Challenging, definitely.
This got me thinking, though, how do I impact others? When I meet them, what do they think? Do I show them love? Then I was reading an article very randomly which talked about a scene from Terrence Malick's movie, called Tree of Life (I haven't seen the movie, don't know anything about it), where the director shows an encounter between two dinosaurs. This scene, as was explained by one of the people who worked on it, was meant to show a moment where the animals learn compassion and love for the first time; in the original screenplay, Malick wrote "Is not love, too, a work of the creation? What should we have been without it?" In the rest of the article (here it is, you can see the video clip there too), they discuss the reality of love and compassion being realized by dinosaurs, and come to the logical scientific conclusion that they wouldn't have shown compassion like humans, they don't do that. The point, though, seems clear; love itself is written into creation. Love ought to be the basis of human interactions; love, and not emotion or instinct, is what should drive how we treat those we encounter.
In the OC (yes, back to that), the people often get confused and forget to act in love; this is understandable, as they have all been raised to seek their own well-being (at least on a societal level). In my life, then, I must think about what acting in love means, and how I can do it successfully, since it is obvious as Malick pointed out that love is a work of the creation, and, even more specifically, of the Creator. Then, today, on the feast of the Martyrdom of John the Baptist, our Holy Father reflected on this topic, on how John the Baptist shows us what it means to live for Christ. The Pope tells us that celebrating this feast we must remember that "we cannot accept compromise about the love of Christ, His word, His truth." He emphasized the part about truth; in living the Christian life, our Holy Father points out, "the truth is the truth and there is no compromise." In order to live in and teach others about this truth, Pope Benedict says, John the Baptist had a deep life of prayer, knowing that "prayer isn't time wasted; it does not steal time away from work--even apostolic work." No matter how important our work, and nothing is important than the work of courageously witnessing to the love of God every day, prayer is more important. We must rely on prayer. The Pope reminds us in this audience (summary is here) that if we have a faithful commitment to prayer, God will be our strength to witness to Him courageously.
So what does this all mean? For me, it means I must commit to prayer, knowing that I want to stay faithful to Christ's truth in order to witness to Him in love for every person that I encounter. If I commit to prayer, He will be my strength. He will give me the courage to commit to truth, and therefore to witness to Him, for nothing is a better witness to Christ than to live in love for His truth, and therefore to love every person.
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