“We are most fully ourselves when we live as part of a community.”
The Other Person
There is an old Russian proverb, some wisdom that may have been imparted to young men as they contemplated marriage, that goes, “Don’t buy the house, buy the neighbor.”
Or put another way, don’t marry the woman only, marry the family.
When I lead the baptism preparation classes for our parish I will often ask the husbands “how many of you thought that you were marrying one person, only to realize after a while that you were married into an entire family?” Without fail every husband in the room raises his hand and nods his head in agreement.
In 2013, author Seth Adam Smith published a blog post that went viral. In it, he related the fear and anxiety he felt just before marrying his childhood friend and sweetheart.
He wrote, “The nearer Kim and I approached the decision to marry, the more I was filled with a paralyzing fear. Was I ready? Was I making the right choice? Was Kim the right person to marry? Would she make me happy?”
He shared his concerns with his father. His father chuckled, shook his head and told Seth, “Seth, you’re being totally selfish. So I’m going to make this really simple: marriage isn’t for you. You don’t marry to make yourself happy, you marry to make someone else happy. More than that, your marriage isn’t for yourself, you’re marrying for a family. Not just for the in-laws and all of that nonsense, but for your future children. Who do you want to help you raise them? Who do you want to influence them? Marriage isn’t for you. It’s not about you. Marriage is about the person you married.”
A Shark Tale
We are made to serve others, to be part of a community, members of the Mystical Body of Christ. The human person is most fully himself when he develops his gifts and talents to transcend himself and put his faculties at the service of the community.
We do not belong to ourselves, we belong to other people.
Robert Herjavec is a successful businessman and entrepreneur. He is perhaps most well known as one of the investors featured on the reality television program “Shark Tank.”
In his 2016 book “You Don’t Have To Be a Shark,” Herjavec opens up about one of the lowest points in his life. His twenty four year marriage had ended in divorce. With three children caught up in the proceedings he was consumed by pain, trauma, guilt and grief.
By contemporary standards Robert was successful with a net worth at the time estimated to be $200 million. He writes that up until that point he had dealt with setbacks with a positive attitude and stubborn determination. But he was unprepared for the pain and hopelessness that overwhelmed him after the loss his marriage. Everything he had achieved up to that point seemed worthless and he felt depressed, lost, and powerless.
He turned to a priest, who was also a family friend. The priest listened with sympathy and understanding and then told him, “Robert, we heal ourselves, when we heal others.”
Two days later, he found himself serving food to the homeless at a mission in Seattle. He writes, “The people I assisted and lived among at the Union gospel Mission in Seattle taught me about love, about hope, and about understanding the needs of others…It did not repair me, but it began to heal me.”
An Artistic Myth
There is a myth, or a public perception, that has grown in the art world in the last few decades or so. It is the myth that the artist creates best in a vacuum, cut off from the world and all other artistic influences so that the artist’s vision remains pure and personal. But this is not the way it works.
In almost every interview, a standard question is to ask the artist who their influences are. The artist will respond by rattling off a list of those artists, past and present, whom they most admire. But the truth is that artists are influenced by every other artist they see. They note in the work of other artists, what works, what doesn’t, and what to avoid. No one lives a life isolated from the world, and the work that would result in such an isolation would most likely only appeal to the artist that created it.
We Are Made For Community
We are here for other people.
God is a community of three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and being made in His image, we are made as a community. From conception we are dependent upon a network of other people. None of us can exist as isolated individuals cut off from the rest. This extends even to how God has chosen to make Himself known to us.
In one sermon Saint Peter converts three thousand people. These would have been the same people who, only weeks before, abandoned Jesus and gave Him up to His persecutors to be put to death. They did not accept the grace of God when God stood before them in the person of the Son. In their hard-heartedness they did not hear Him.
But hearing about Him from Peter, cuts them to the heart and they cry out asking what they must do. Peter calls them to repent, to give up their old self-centered ways and be baptized into Christ and the community of the Church.
We each have a personal relationship with Jesus. But just as a marriage involves more than one man and one woman, our relationship with Jesus involves His family, the Church.
Pax vobiscum