REDIRECT OUR LIFE
It’s not always easy to put a name on that deep and persistent discomfort that we can feel at any point of our life. Thus some have confessed on more than one occasion, that they were looking for «something different», someplace else, a new light, maybe an experience capable of giving new color to their daily life.
We can call it «inner emptiness», dissatisfaction, incapacity to find something solid that fills the desire to live intensely. Maybe it would be better to call it «boredom», weariness of always living the same, the sensation of not being sure of the secret of life: we are making a mistake in something essential, and don’t know exactly what it is.
Sometimes the crisis takes on a religious tone. Can we speak of «loss of faith»? We don’t know what we really believe in, nothing succeeds in enlightening us within, we have abandoned the naïve religion of past times, but we haven’t replaced it with anything better. Then a strange sensation can grow within: we’re left without any key to direct out life. What can we do?
The first thing is to not give in to being sad or uptight: all this is calling us to be alive. Within that discomfort that is so persistent there’s something very healthy: our desire to live something more positive and less false, something more worthy and less artificial. What we need to do is to redirect our life. We aren’t talking about correcting a concrete aspect of our personhood. That might come afterwards. Right now what’s important is to go to what’s essential, find a font of life and of salvation.
Why not stop to hear that urgent call of Jesus to wake up? Don’t we need to hear his words? «Stay awake», «take stock of the times you are living in», «it’s the hour to wake up». We all need to ask ourselves what it is that we are neglecting in our life, what it is that we need to change, and to what should we dedicate more attention and more time.
Jesus’ words are directed to everyone and to each one: «Stay awake». We need to act. If we do, we will live one of those rare moments when we feel that we’re «awake» in the deepest depths of our being.
Jose Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
