The Light

The readings of today's Mass include the famous "John 3:16" quote, which refers to Jesus as "the light";

"the light came into the world,but people preferred darkness to light,because their works were evil.For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light,so that his works might not be exposed.But whoever lives the truth comes to the light,so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God. "

Recently I had an experience which made this verse strike a chord. There was an attempted attack on this blog which many of you have come to be regular followers of. If you have noticed, there is a place at the end of each post where you can leave a comment. Luckily, I have the "approve comment" option turned on, in the event that immaturity gets the better of someone and they attempt to leave a nasty comment. I enjoy the potential that blog comments allow for debate, an educated, and mature forum for intillectual exchange. However, I do not tolerate direct, and immature slanderous things about me personally, which is what was anonymously left earlier in the week...of course this comment was not approved.

An anonymous comment is all well and good, but had this person identified themselves perhaps I would have allowed the post. Since they were in fact so proud to slander me with nonsense, maybe they would be just as proud for the world to know who the immature individual was.

It's funny how we sometimes can be as people. When we have a gripe against someone, why is it that we sometimes find it so much more neccessary to drag that gripe out in drama and endless subtle references to it. Why not just say what we have to say, and move on with life...and say it directly to that person. Or worse yet, once everything that needs to be said has been said, why is it neccessary to continue to draw it out. All that does is reflect on us, as being the one who won't let it go.

That's because affairs of the heart are not so easily forgotten. Sometimes when we feel we have been wronged, we do not forget it. We buy into lies, we submit to gossip, we submit to random acts of immaturity, we slip into the darkness . . . because in the darkness these immaturities are not illuminated and it's so much easier then dealing with the truth.

I remember in Seminary there was a guy in my class who could never let anything go. He would be hurt by someone, or something, and would make constant references to that hurt as time would go on. His own personal life had inflicted some pretty deep wounds, and it wasn't until we started to get to know him better that we started to figure out a little bit more about him. We started to learn about his past, and some of the serious wrongs he had experienced. It seemed as though he had such difficulty expressing the pain he experienced from those life changing experiences he had gone through, that it was easier to express the anger he had pent up inside by harping on these other percieved wrongs. One day while outside smoking a cigarette, a fellow seminarian said to him, "you are going to be a bitter old man by 30, if you dont learn how to let things go."

How true that is for all of us. It's tough in life to deal with a gripe and let it go, but thats what we have to do. It must be done however in the proper light. An issue with a co-woorker should be handled not in the midst of the office, but one on one. A dissapproval of a legal matter may be more appropriate in a public light as we see in things like rallys and protests.

Dealing with our pains, and complaints, and percieved wrongs is a constant battle. Unfortunately life seems to take no rest from the challanges it chooses to deal us, so its best we master this ability, as we will be making use of it often.