trust God<\/a>, especially when I\u2019ve been lied to by unhealthy marketing, social standards, any number of other things. So it\u2019s really easy to fall into this habit of not knowing our value.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHumility<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Now that we understand the identity crisis, let\u2019s talk about three things we can do to begin to understand our own value. So, first and foremost: Humility. The word \u201chumilitas\u201d is related to the Latin word \u201chumus,\u201d which means \u201cearth,\u201d as in \u201cdown to earth,\u201d as in knowing truth. Thomas Aquinas once said \u201cHumilitas veritas,\u201d meaning \u201chumility is truth.\u201d Now, I\u2019m not talking about that false humility stuff, where we go \u201cAw shucks, I\u2019m not good enough.\u201d That\u2019s just pride. That\u2019s just, often, false humility; pride disguising itself as humility. It\u2019s not humility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Humility is knowing who you are, and let\u2019s use me as an example. I know a lot of things about myself, obviously. I know that I will never have a full head of hair again. I\u2019m okay with that. I know that I will never play a professional sport. I\u2019m on what they call the \u201cwrong side of thirty\u201d and, frankly, some mornings I understand that. I am very good at certain things. I\u2019m very bad at other things. These are truths. But to be humble is not to say \u201cI\u2019m no good,\u201d it\u2019s to say \u201cI am good, because God made me to be good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
God didn\u2019t need to make you. God didn\u2019t need to make me. God chose to make you out of love. You aren\u2019t incidental, you aren\u2019t a side-effect. Your existence is a deliberate choice made by God, and continually made by God every moment of every day. That\u2019s how much you\u2019re loved. You are never not being loved into existence, which is just a wordy way of saying you are literally being loved into existence every moment of every day. Even when you don\u2019t feel it, your existence is contingent upon your being loved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meditation On Suffering<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Second: We need to meditate more often on suffering. Recently, I\u2019ve been spending a lot of time with the Ninth Station of the Cross: Jesus falls the third time. Now let\u2019s think about this for a moment. He\u2019s on the ground, He\u2019s tired, He\u2019s beaten, He\u2019s bloody, He\u2019s yearning for relief. But relief will not come. His friends have abandoned Him, the crowd is spitting and cursing and screaming at Him, and He knows that if He can muster up just enough strength to get up off the ground, there will be no relief. His reward for persevering is the cross.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, I think a lot of us have felt that way before, where we feel like even if we persevere, all we\u2019re heading towards is more pain. But there\u2019s a beauty in that. In a lot of religions, pain is considered a bad thing. It\u2019s dismissed as \u201cWe need to avoid it.\u201d Catholicism is very clear: suffering for the sake of God is always a good thing. Suffering for no point, that\u2019s just worthless, that\u2019s just agony. But suffering for God is beautiful. Suffering with God is beautiful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recently, a priest-friend said to me that his least favorite term in all of medicine is \u201cquality of life,\u201d and that\u2019s because all life has quality inherent to it. When he was pope, John Paul II, St. John Paul II, he would give his most important prayers to the sick and suffering, and say that he needed them to pray, he needed them, because, through their suffering, they were closer to Christ than he was. Now think about this for a second: This is a man who some refer to as St. John Paul the Great. This is a man who was canonized very quickly. This is a man who is held up as a phenomenal saint, by me as well. And this is a man who would walk through a building he\u2019s never been in and could, behind closed doors, sense the presence of the Eucharist. This is a man who… those who knew him said \u201cHe didn\u2019t take time for prayer; he lived in prayer, and took time out of prayer to care for us.\u201d Now, this man that I\u2019ve just described said to those who were suffering \u201cIn your suffering, you are closer to Jesus than I am.\u201d Wow. Wow. The beauty of suffering for and with Christ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reshape Your Perception<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Third: Reshape your perception. Let\u2019s take a minute. Put yourself in the place of the apostles after the crucifixion. In fact, let\u2019s go with a scripture first. I\u2019m going to read it real quick. Gospel of John chapter 20, verse 19 says On the evening of the first day of the week, when the doors were locked where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, \u201cPeace be with you.\u201d<\/em><\/strong> Now, the first half of that scripture verse is all about: They\u2019re terrified, they\u2019re locking the door, they\u2019re hiding in the upper room where they had the Last Supper a few days ago. They don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on, even though Jesus clearly told them \u201cI\u2019ll be back.\u201d Not in like a terminator way, but He did. If you read through the scripture, He told them. But they still just… *whistle* right over their head, like it is for most of us, and they were terrified.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAnd these are the early saints and martyrs of the church, some of the great saints and martyrs of the church, and yet they were struggling with some of the same fears and loneliness and abandonment that a lot of us feel. So if they can feel that, and these are the great saints or some of the great saints of the early church, that means that you, in your struggles, can still be a saint. You, in your struggles, can still be a saint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, how do we begin to do this? Jesus appears to them in the room. And I\u2019ve found that a great way to go, to have that moment where you finally begin to give yourself fully to God, is to learn gratitude. And you may be good at gratitude – I most of my life have not been. So what I did was I learned something after watching a TED talk, and I revised this Oprah-approved program and whatever. And I started doing this thing every day where I do three things. 1: I pray. Sometimes that prayer is just little snippets of prayer as a part of my day, sometimes it\u2019s rocking a child to sleep – like \u201cDear God, please help me.\u201d This is just *Shh* *Shh* \u201cPut the kid to sleep, help the…\u201d *Shh*. \u201cOh, mama Mary, you\u2019re a better parent than I am.\u201d That sort of thing. Sometimes it\u2019s just a pure desperation prayer, other times I\u2019m front of the Blessed Sacrament, it\u2019s any number of things. But I pray every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2: I exercise. Now, for some people they think exercise and they think real intense. No, no, no. A walk around the block is exercise for me. But the third thing, and this is where it gets very important: To begin to reshape my mentality, every night, my wife and I do what we call \u201cten things.\u201d We each list five things, going back and forth, from that day for which we are thankful. Now, there\u2019s some days where this is very difficult, but that\u2019s why we need to do it, because there are things in every day for which we are grateful. And the guy on the TED talk I watched that one time, he was talking neuroscience, blah, blah, blah, rewiring the brain in 21 days. But the truth is that I have learned to see things in a positive light, I\u2019ve learned to not beat myself up as much, and I\u2019ve learned to not let other people beat me up, to not let their words affect me in a negative way. Gratitude has helped me to see with clarity God\u2019s perception of my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jesus Died For You<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
I just want to close out real quick and say that C. S. Lewis once said \u201cHe died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less.\u201d Think about that. Often, we think \u201cOh, Jesus died for our sins.\u201d Yes, He did. Jesus died for you. For you. That\u2019s how much you are worth. So if we can begin to learn gratitude, if we can begin to learn humility, and if we can meditate regularly on the beauty of suffering, we can begin to see how God sees us. We can undo this identity crisis, break free of it, and learn to love ourselves just a fraction of how God loves us. God loves you, God died for you, God desires an intimate relationship with you and wants to lead you on an epic adventure, the likes of which you have never dreamed of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n