Love and apathy

Good News Reflection
Monday of the 27th Week of Ordinary Time
October 4, 2010

Today's Saint: Francis of Assisi
Pray to help others through giving money, time, and talents.:
http://wordbytes.org/saints/DailyPrayers/FrancisAssisi.htm

Today's Readings:
Gal 1:6-12
Ps 111:(5)1b-2,7-10c
Luke 10:25-37
http://www.usccb.org/nab/1090410.shtml
USCCB Podcast of the Readings:
http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/10_10_04.mp3

Love and apathy

It's interesting that in the parable of the Good Samaritan (today's Gospel reading), Jesus does not tell us the identity or nationality or social status of the man who needs help. We don't know if the traveler from Samaria helped the enemy or a fellow Samaritan.

It doesn't matter. The sin of the priest and the Levite is that they didn't care enough to even find out if this man was alive or dead, nor what kind of help he needed, nor even if he was a fellow Jew. Trapped in their self-centered world, they choose to completely ignore him.

The opposite of love is not hate. It's apathy: ignoring a need, not caring, doing nothing when there is something we can do to relieve suffering.

We can identify when apathy has affected us by looking at the voids in our lives – a feeling of continual dissatisfaction, the empty, aching, lonely, scary voids that indicate something is missing.

What's missing is love. Because the people we know do not give us all the love that we need, we must rely all the more fully on God, who is love and who is never apathetic toward us. He should fill our whole heart, our whole soul, and our whole mind. However, the achy voids we feel are clues that we haven't yet given him our full attention and devotion.

When God's love isn't filling us, we try to fill the voids with busyness, co-dependent relationships, over-eating, over-shopping, anesthetizing drinks or drugs, or self-esteem boosting accolades.

Aha, there really is no such thing as a void, is there! A vacuum sucks in whatever is near the hole. We fill our empty areas with things and people and activities that are not God. This causes apathy, because it prevents the outward flow of love, and at the same time it makes us miserable, because it never sufficiently brings us love.

Jesus says that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves and that every person we encounter is a neighbor. Why? Because caring for others moves us from self-centeredness to "God-filledness." By giving love away, God rushes in and fills up the emptied places with his own presence. Alternatively, by choosing to be self-centered and apathetic, we ignore opportunities to give love away, and oh how truly unsatisfying that is!

We were not designed to be selfish. Joy and satisfaction come from actively loving everyone – which, don't forget, includes ourselves. Doing what we can when we can – for our own needs and for others – is the cure for everything that is lacking in our lives.

© 2010 by Terry A. Modica
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