The Opening up of Love - Lent Journal (Sunday Lent III)

I'm at home watching Kate & Leopold (why yes - yes, I am a hopeless romantic. Why do you ask?). I won't go into the details of the movie - if you haven't seen it, you probably won't - but suffice it to say, Kate has been treated poorly and taken advantage of in past relationships, and it's made her cynical and jaded about love:

I'm not very good with men ... maybe that whole 'love thing' is just a grown-up version of Santa Claus; just a myth we've been fed since childhood. So we keep buying magazines, and joining clubs, and doing therapy and watching movies with hip-hop songs played over montages in this pathetic attempt to explain why our Love Santa keeps getting caught in the chimney.

In summary: she's been let down so many times that she doesn't think the real deal exists. Or maybe she thinks it does but that she doesn't deserve it.

The scene after the above quote, Kate wakes up to Leopold making her breakfast and serving her coffee, and she starts crying as she eats it. It's a pivot point in the movie, as Kate sees the wounds in how she had been treated and comes to understand that she deserved better, and Leopold is willing to offer that to her. Later that day as she sits with him, she curls up next to him and says: I want more of this. I want more of 1876.

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I think this is something like the experience of the Samaritan woman at the well in today's Gospel: she's been so mistreated that she had just gotten used to getting by. She was living in sin, but more significantly she was fine with that being the way things were. She didn't think she deserved better. Maybe she didn't think she could be better.

When Jesus approached her and offered her something greater, something opened up: she realized the extent of God's love. She realized she was longing for something more and she hadn't known it. Being loved well can bring you to life.

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There is a lot of talk in the Church and society of dignity and human worth, but I don't think we necessarily live that out in our day-to-day lives particularly well. I think without realizing it many of us think we are being loved to the fullest extent that we deserve, but the reality is drops in an ocean. We lower our eyes because we don't see what is above, or we're afraid of what will be taken from us if we open ourselves up to the possibility. We long for something greater but we think it impossible, so we limit our desires to something less.

Do we realize what we are being offered? Or have we become so used to being mistreated that we settle for half-baked love? Do we take the time to demonstrate that love to those around us? Do we make a point of telling those who have been wounded - You deserve better. You are worth more. You are capable of greater things.

A few years ago when I was coming into the Church, a dear friend of mine shared a simple prayer with me:

Let me let you love me.

It is never a question of whether God loves you. That love is infinite and unconditional. The true question is: will you give yourself over to Him? Will you offer your wounds to the healing hands of Christ, the Divine Physician? Will you let God show you just how good He is, and how beautifully glorious you are in His eyes, and just what you are worth?