I have never done a DNA test and I probably never will, but I don’t need one to know that I am an ethnical hodge-podge. On one side, I am descended from Italians from the south of Italy along the Adriatic coast, and on the other side I am Scotch-Irish. Even at first glance, the combination looks like a vinegar-oil salad dressing. Just to complicate things, since both sides come from seaside areas, I have no doubt that the Mediterranean side includes ancestors from Greece, Turkey, the Middle East, North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. The other side certainly includes Gaels from both Scotland and Ireland, certainly Viking blood from various Scandinavian countries and quite possibly Russians.
And yet that all adds up to me being me. Of course, bringing the various facets of my background into harmony makes me feel like Ben-Hur trying to unite the horses of his chariot team to run together. Yet, when I do manage to get the various facets to harmonize, I find that they enrich one another, just like the best salad dressings. The Scotch-Irish calms down the Italian, and the Italian in me enlivens the Scotch-Irish. Actually, instead of comparing myself to a team of horses, I find that a better metaphor is a bell. A bell, when struck, gives off a single note, yet that single note is made up of the many overtones that the note contains. You can hear the overtones if you listen closely to a good bell. It is the overtones in harmony that create the beauty of the bell. If one of the overtones were missing or badly harmonized, the sound of the bell would be less beautiful and even distasteful. This is true of the various facets of my personality: if one facet of my personality is out of harmony with the others, I am diminished. I lack wholeness.
So far, I have spoken only of my ethnic background, but there is much more that makes up the unity that is me. There are my attractions and antipathies, my strengths and my weaknesses and the various other facets of my being. All of these were created to exist in harmony as a unique, unrepeatable person. Jesus prayed, “May they be one, Father, as we are one.” In order to be one with others as he entreated, I must first be one with myself. This is not easily done, but it is necessary. To return to my favorite metaphor of music, I must tune all the facets of myself into harmony with God and with the whole of me. Every facet of my being is meant to enrich and enhance the whole, just as every overtone of the bell partakes in the whole beauty of its sound. If one overtone stands out too much, the music is distorted. If one facet of myself presents itself as the primary expression of who I am, I am distorting myself.
I am not just one aspect of myself. I am the whole of myself, all the facets harmoniously united. It is the noun that expresses the reality, not the adjectives. As Pope Francis said, “The communicator must make people understand the weight of the reality of nouns that reflect the reality of people. And this is a mission of communication: to communicate with reality, without sweetening with adjectives or adverbs.”
The reflections in this article flow from a comment I posted on an article in America Magazine on June 1st, 2024. There I wrote: “As someone who has pronounced a vow of chastity, along with the vows of poverty and obedience, the greatest challenge that I find in chastity is to purify my way of seeing people. As long as I see someone through my own attractions, whatever those attractions are, I am not seeing them as God sees them, and I will not be able to love them as He loves them.” I have been pondering that comment for some time, and the more I ponder it, the richer I find it to be.
Identity politics are becoming more and more common. We identify ourselves by one facet of our being, such as a religious facet (Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, None, etc.), an ethnic facet (Italian, Scotch-Irish, Hispanic, Arabic, Filipino, or some other ethnicity), a racial facet (White, Black, Native American, or another race), a sexual facet (such as Straight, Gay, Binary) – and all the while we are reducing ourselves to that one adjective and losing sight of all the rich variety that makes each person an integral wonder. We think that we are empowering ourselves by focusing our strength on that one aspect, while at the same time we impoverish ourselves by throwing out the other facets that make up the uniqueness of each person. We avoid the challenge of getting to know ourselves as we truly are in all our unique richness.
This rejection will flow over into my relationship with others. How I see myself will definitely affect how I see other people, and how I see other people will influence how I love them. If I accept to see myself as God sees me, then I will love myself as he loves me and I will see and appreciate the whole of me, not just an isolated part. Only then I will be able to see each person in their own unique wholeness and love them as he loves them.
As a religious, with my vow of chastity, I have a special call to come to this wholeness of vision. The Collect for the Mass for Vocations to Religious Life expresses that call: “Holy Father, who, though urging all the faithful to perfect charity, never cease to prompt many to follow more closely in the footsteps of you Son, grant, we pray, that those you have chosen for this special calling may, by their way of life, show to the Church and the world a clear sign of your Kingdom.”
The Kingdom of God is the kingdom of perfect love lived out in the life of the Trinity. This is the unity that Jesus prayed for. We religious are to be a sign of that kingdom and priests are to be the guides and mentors to lead us all to that unity. As signs and as mentors, we need to live in ourselves that purity of vision that does not filter others through the facets of our own being. We need to be united to God within ourselves and among ourselves lest we lead others astray.
Becoming myself, harmonizing the various facets that are an integral part of me, is a challenge, but it is necessary if I am to love others as God loves me. I will never achieve it perfectly in this life, but I must at least work toward it, leaning on Jesus who prayed for that unity. The closer I come to it, the more it will be a delightful surprise, for I will find that God made me to be a masterpiece, and I will find that I live among the billions of fascinating masterpieces that are all the persons he created.
Sr. Gabriela of the Incarnation, O.C.D. (Sr. Gabriela Hicks) was born in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in the Gold Rush country of California, which she remembers as heaven on earth for a child! She lived a number of years in Europe, and then entered the Discalced Carmelite Monastery in Flemington, New Jersey, where she has been a member for forty years. www.flemingtoncarmel.org.
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