Mine Charity Has Run Cold

I sometimes wonder these days if I am alone in feeling numb to the world, though I suspect not. The repeated ripping off of the scab of the past year and a half has produced a kind of scarring of our collective psyches, I think, in a kind of low-level trauma. 

This past week I got messages from friends of people we know in the ICU with COVID; people who have been fired from their job because of vaccine mandates; friends' diocese who have been stripped of the Latin Mass; the debacle of the withdraw from Afghanistan; the re-emergence of the delta variant and the constantly shifting goalposts of CDC protocol; and devastating weather-related incidents. Add to this my own personal work-related stresses due to personnel change and other internal pressures, and I feel like I'm on the ropes just taking body blows. 

I may be more susceptible to it, but in times of stress and, dare I say, trauma, I think it is common for the mind and body to kind of shut down as a defense response. In many ways, lately, I have gone numb. Care and concern feels like a luxury for good times when you have the bandwidth for it. This is the embarassing truth, when gold is tried by fire to become pure gold. That is, when faith be genuine it be tested by suffering and comes out genuine (1 Peter 1:7) 

I am in survival mode. My prayer is a pilot-light: steady and sustained, but not heating anything. I feel I have very little of myself to give; certainly not of any caliber of those of the saints. We like to imagine ourselves a Maximilian Kolbe or a Fr. Ciszek ministering to our brothers and sisters in the gulags during such times. It's humbling to realize your reserves are pretty shallow, and your selfish self-preservation deep. 

If I'm honest, too, I have noticed with a bit of horror a kind of resentment in myself in being a cheer-giver during such difficult times as well. I'm running on empty myself, and catch my self thinking, "Who will fill me up? Who will cheer me on? I am done with this. I have nothing to give." I've retracted my sphere, into concentrating on my family and my work, and my faith is in maintenance mode. Even when I have wanted to serve, it seems opportunities have dried up with COVID liability fear.

One thing that has shook me, made me cynical, is that I trust very few people these days. I don't know who to listen to. I don't trust what's coming out of Washington or the Vatican alike. But I've also felt turned out by voices I previously thought were solid, who I no longer trust. Whether they are false prophets or true prophets I will leave to the Lord to judge, but the things they speak no longer resonate with me. If there is anything diabolical about this virus, it is it's ability to deceive and divide, and there are no shortage of people on both sides riding its coattails. 

In reading the scriptures, our Lord sets as a precursor that false prophets precede the running cold of love among the faithful:

"And Jesus answering, said to them: Take heed that no man seduce you: For many will come in my name saying, I am Christ: and they will seduce many. And you shall hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that ye be not troubled. For these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be pestilences, and famines, and earthquakes in places: Now all these are the beginnings of sorrows. 

Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall put you to death: and you shall be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then shall many be scandalized: and shall betray one another: and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall seduce many. And because iniquity hath abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold." (Mt 24:4-12)

There are two things that fill me with terror: the thought of hearing the Lord say, "I knew thee not," (Lk 13:27), and to not have love (charity). For what does St. Paul say, should our love run cold? Everything becomes for naught:

"If I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And if I should have prophecy and should know all mysteries, and all knowledge, and if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity is patient, is kind: charity envieth not, dealeth not perversely; is not puffed up; Is not ambitious, seeketh not her own, is not provoked to anger, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth with the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never falleth away: whether prophecies shall be made void, or tongues shall cease, or knowledge shall be destroyed. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away." (1 Cor 13:1-10)

Some days I lament that I will never be a saint, because I am nothing more than a common man with an average-amount of love to give. That I will be put into the furnace and disintegrate, crack under pressure, turn over my brothers, surrender my faith. That my trust in the Lord to achieve the impossible is untenable. I pray so much for the grace of final perseverance these days, and try never to miss First Fridays and First Saturdays, because it is only grace that will sustain me--I am realistic enough to know I have no power or greatness in myself of my own accord. 

I have grown weary in love, tired and distrustful of anyone but the Lord Christ, feeling used up and washed out. Lord, please renew your charity within me so that I may serve your people. Because the love of the world is in me, the love of the Father is not. Take this worldly love from me, Lord. I can do nothing without you, and nothing without love matters. Lord. send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth. Replace this heart of stone with a heart of flesh so I may do Your will.