It’s almost Halloween, so naturally that has me thinking about spooky things. As a college senior, some of the scariest things are not Halloween costumes or decorations, but real things: midterms and plans for the future. Both create a sense of scarcity.
I’m a worrier, and one of those worries is that there won’t be enough time to do all the things that need to be done or that I’m not capable enough to begin the next step of life. That’s one temptation of Kronos time, the almighty clock that ticks on independent of whether or not we keep step with it. When Kronos gets one step ahead of me, it makes me feel like I need to rush through life just to keep up. Then, getting caught up in this chase leads me to a circular rut of isolation, worrying, and anxiousness. It goes nowhere.
At a recent Candlelight Mass, Fr. Casey Beaumier, S.J., offered his thoughts on this worrying. Worries are isolating, insular in nature. They trap you in an unending loop of fretting about issues that only you are familiar with, which feels so all-consuming. Then there’s concerns. Concerns have a similar source as worries, but they offer a way out of this unending loop. One deals with worries alone, but one can offer concerns to God for resolution. In doing so, one moves from the scarcity, which characterizes humanity, into the freedom of abundance, which characterizes the Divine. With God there is Kairos time, undefinable and infinite. There is always enough.
The abundant perspective of concerns reminds me of the Suscipe Prayer of St. Ignatius. In it, Ignatius recognizes his liberty, memory, understanding, will, and everything that he has as gifts from God, so offers them back to Him to receive His love and grace. These two gifts are sufficient.
I think this prayer is a beautiful testament to what God can do with humans. We are freely given a unique combination of gifts and talents at the beginning of our lives. Once we recognize and own that, it certainly unleashes a confidence and freedom in our being. However, to recognize what we have in our lives and to offer that back to God is equivalent to a Super Mario power up. Returning our lives to God enables us to receive God’s love and grace, which are abundant by nature. Through God’s love and grace, we get to participate in an aspect of the divine abundance. To me, that is probably one of the most beautiful parts of faith.
If someone asked me to define faith as of late, two verbs would come to my mind: abide and sustain. Now, it’s pumpkin-carving season, so let’s think about this as if your life were a carved pumpkin with a light on the inside. Intentionally carving out a space within yourself where God can abide is practicing faith. Faith is an active cultivation of a dwelling space for the presence of God within. Once this space is carved, the internal light of God can properly radiate.
This is not to say that the light doesn’t illuminate your shadows, weaknesses, and insecurities, because those are absolutely there. These shadows exist even in an unlit pumpkin, but in isolation. Rather, the gift of the light of God shows your brilliance specifically among the messy midst of weaknesses and failures. It sustains all of who you are in the present without making you beholden to the present. Christianity teaches that the pumpkin of every believer and non-believer has a candle, and the choice of scarcity or abundance is the defining act of lighting the wick of the candle within.
Noella D’Souza is a senior studying Chemistry with a minor in Medical Humanities. She’s is deeply devoted to BC Full Swing, Hillside Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, puns, and the Oxford Comma, in that order.
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