Catholic Education Outreach / Matt Faley
God faithfully searches for us in the rubble of our lives
In 1989, a massive 8.2 magnitude earthquake hit Northwest Armenia. Some 25,000 people died. Villages were flattened. Lives were changed forever.
That day, just like every other day for a number of years, Armand, a 10-year old boy, and his father made the long walk to Armand’s school. Armand’s father dropped off his son, and made his way toward his place of work. As he was walking, the earthquake hit. After all the madness had settled, Armand’s father sprinted towards his son’s school. When he made it there, all he came to find was rubble and ruin. Without thinking twice, he just started digging.
Parents and others would stop and help, but after a while they would get discouraged and move on. Twelve hours passed. Then 18. Then 24, 30. Finally, in the 38th hour, the father heard a muffled groan beneath the rubble. With more passion and purpose, he dug. He turned over one final stone, and he exclaimed, “Armand!” The father found his son buried beneath the bricks. In fact, he found 16 students alive.
As the students all made their way from beneath the mess, Armand turned to them and said, “See. I told you my father would never leave us.”
Our lives matter.
This message, before all else, is one we in the Office of Young Adult and College Campus Ministry feel compelled to bring to the young adults we walk alongside. Our lives matter. Our Lord is after our hearts. He is searching constantly through our rubble, our brokenness, our junk, our deepest desires, our disordered love to show us his perfect love, and to show us that we have a role in the Church and in the world that no one else can fill.
So often there is a fight for identity that takes place for a modern young adult. All are in search of their personality at the deepest level. “Who am I?” we ask throughout our lives. We try to construct an identity to find fulfillment. We follow our well, thought-out plans that are in line with criteria of success that the world has laid out for us. We do all of these things, and yet we still find ourselves empty and unsatisfied, looking for more.
This is the story the world calls us into. But Our Lord tells us a different story: “As he chose us in him, before the foundations of the world” (Eph 1:4).
Before the world was created, we were a thought in God’s mind. And from that foundation, he seeks after us and digs for us through our brokenness, reminding us of our deepest identity.
As wise author Community of the Beatitudes Father Jacque Philippe said, “Our true identity is not so much a reality to be constructed as a gift to be received. It is not about achieving, but letting ourselves be begotten.”
Being a young adult in search of our place in the world is about putting ourselves in position to be found by the One who constantly seeks us. Our lives matter because we are loved. Not loved in a general, global way. God’s love for us is personal and individual.
“Each of us has the right to say God loves me like he loves no one else,” Father Philippe continued.
In fact, he does not love two people in the same way because it is actually his love that creates our personality. We can give God, the world, the Church, our family and the poor a love that nobody has ever given them because we can give them the love that belongs only to us. Our lives matter. In God’s heart, we have a unique place and an irreplaceable role.
(Matt Faley is archdiocesan director of young adult and college campus ministry. E-mail him at mfaley@archindy.org.) †