The Power of Beauty in Times of Darkness

I have a feeling that when God made Ireland, He knew that the Irish would have the rain and dark winters and melancholic temperaments to contend with — and so He made Ireland amazingly, shockingly, jaw-droppingly beautiful.

I am sure He knew that they would need this beauty to give them hope throughout centuries of oppression that they would face.

I have no doubt He intended to use this beauty to draw them closer to Him as they walked these paths and fields, climbed these mountains and descended these valleys.

I am pretty sure God was whispering “I am here and you mean everything to me” when He formed this land that would inspire Saints and Scholars when there was so much darkness across the land.

And even when the Irish were literally being starved to death — a genocide of a people who were considered “less than”, as the abundant harvests of Ireland continued to be shipped to the landlords in England — even then, I know God didn’t abandon them.

I am sure that He wept with them and welcomed them Home, and He promised in the end to bring good out of all the evil and injustice.

Perhaps part of the good that would come, was that the Irish would move to other lands and bring their strong faith in God with them, wherever they went.

In many ways, the Irish became missionaries to the world around them.  They brought their love, their courage and their faith to the places that they settled.

I have always been proud to call myself “Irish-American”, to identify with the people of Ireland — to be of the same stock of men and women who fought against oppression and won.

I was proud to come from a people who literally faced being drawn and quartered for being caught in a Catholic Mass — and still their faith did not waiver.

Who wouldn’t want to be associated with such courage and conviction?

Recent years have brought to light awful atrocities and scandals in the Catholic Church in Ireland, and in our own country “Irish Catholics” have been part of many of our recent scandals, too — it has made me lose a little pride in something I always was so darn proud to be part of.

Maybe that’s a good thing.  Maybe humility is exactly the place we need to be to allow God to work in our lives.

And yet, I love the Irish and I love the spirit of this people and I believe great things will come of the Irish and of Irish-Catholics, if we are willing to rediscover who we really are in God’s eyes.

The same is true for everybody reading this.  We weren’t created for mediocrity — we were made for greatness — and maybe times like these are meant to reconnect us with the original purpose of our lives.

Returning to Ireland after 16 years reminded me of that. I could feel God calling us back to Him as I stepped into His amazing creation.  I could feel His strength and His grandeur there.

I believe God is calling on the faithful in Ireland to begin a new evangelization — to right the wrongs that have been done there — and I believe God is calling us to do the same here in America.

To be honest, I needed a little distance from our own scandals to be able to appreciate the good that is still in the Church — there is so much good — I was beginning to lose sight of that.

I needed this pilgrimage.  I needed time to pray and step back from my newsfeed and to spend time with my family and just enjoy the simple beauty of life again.

Flying to Ireland twice in one day didn’t seem like a good beginning to being renewed and restored on pilgrimage — but at the very least it made us appreciate the gift it was to finally reach Ireland!

Our first day in Ireland, we had the most amazing guide bring us around the Ring of Kerry, Valencia Island and the Skellig Ring.  If you go to Ireland, you have to visit these places.

After just one day of walking these places, my soul felt restored in many ways.

God is there in the Beauty.  I am convinced that He created all that beauty to restore us when the ugliness and sinfulness of the world would begin to overwhelm us.

Yes, we need to spend time adoring God’s beautiful face in adoration — but we also need to adore Him in His creation.

The truth is, this trip reminded me something that I have known for a while:  we can’t just keep staring at all the ugly, the evil, the scandals around us — or we will soon find ourselves so full of hatred and despair that we will become the very thing that we hate.

If we do that, Satan wins.  So we just have to stop doing that.

To be absolutely honest, before I left for Ireland, I was beginning to feel hatred in my heart for the cardinals and bishops who have done such awful things to innocent people in our Church.

The truth is, they are despicable in many ways, but God is asking something heroic of us.  He wants us to pray and sacrifice for the victims, but He also wants us to pray for the perpetrators of the evil.

As Christians we are admonished, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good”. (Romans 12:21)

Gotta be honest, I was beginning to want to overcome evil, by evil — that, my friends, is what staring at the darkness for too long will do to you.

Jesus makes it very clear, “But to you who hear I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you”. (Luke 6:27).

This kind of love is impossible for us, but it is possible for God.

If I’m being honest, I’m not there yet.  I’m still at the “I just want to punch them in the face” stage — but if God wants me to get there, to that place of love, then darn it, I’m going to try to get there because I trust Him on this one.

If you feel hatred for evil-doers creeping up within you, it’s time to step back, go to confession, go on retreat, or spend time with God in Adoration — at the very least step away from the screens and step out into His beauty for a while.

I needed to encounter God and His beauty in Ireland.  I was struggling inside after so much wrestling with the demons surrounding the scandals.

I needed Him to restore my weary heart.

I needed to run in the waves and feel the wind on my face and see the wildflowers growing in beautiful bunches all around the Island.

I needed to laugh with my kids as they tumbled down hills and ran away from waves and tried to avoid stepping in cow patties.

Taking that time, slowly began to transform all that struggle that was going on inside of me.

It helped me to have hope that this sad time in our Church is the beginning of something beautiful.

I know some will say that I’m just burying my head in the sand — but that’s not what I’m trying to do.

We can’t bury our heads in the sand — but we also need to avoid the other extreme — which is burying our heads in the crap (pardon my French).

If you are keeping your head in all the ugliness and not taking time to step away from it, then I would say you are endangering your soul in much the same way that the person who buries their head in the sand is doing.

Both leave you with an unrealistic vision of what truly lies before you, and both extremes leave a person incapable of effectively facing the challenges before them.

Instead, keep your eyes on Him and what He is asking you to do.

That might mean ministering to victims of abuse,  or fighting against corruption in the Church or it might simply mean loving your spouse and your kids and raising them to know and share the truth with others.

It is not selfish to take time away from the newsfeeds so that you can hear Christ’s call into your life again.

In fact, I would dare say that the world needs us to take that time, so that we can be a people of hope — a people who know that no matter how dark things may appear, that love will always have the final word.

Let’s be a people of the light.

“All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.”

~St. Francis of Assisi~

 

 

Sharing over at Kelly’s and praying for her sweet Fulton.