I Repeat: Wake Up!

The Face of Humanity: Why Life Holds So Much More for Us than We Think

Stand at the crossroads and look: ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.

— Jeremiah 6:16

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Photo by Lili Popper on Unsplash

There is nothing as renewing as going on a pilgrimage or an adventure. You’re virtually guaranteed to come back with new perspectives on life. My own experience of the last few weeks, combining a pilgrimage to a Marian sanctuary with a great adventure among homesteading people in a poor Eastern European country outside the EU, has been particularly eye-opening as to what life truly can be. It has also been eye-opening as to how far I had begun to stray from that true life, clinging to my “safe” daily routine of television and snacks on the couch.

Stepping back from the craziness of Western European city life to live at the pace of nature also made me realise even more how absurd modern European life has become. We can have everything we need in a few clicks on an ever-present screen. We can have any kind of food, drink, tool or anything at all, whenever we want. We instantly have hot water and machines that do the biggest part of our work. We have become used to it as though it is normal to live like that. But in the meantime, silently, we have lost our sense of what it means to be a human person, what the value of life is, how much we need nature and are connected to it. How much our environment affects us. How much noise we are surrounded by instead of meaningful sounds. We have lost the sense of real life as our Creator meant it to be.

Going beyond my comfort zone, I discovered so much. I found that there is a different kind of life: more real, more simple, back to basics and working with your hands. A life that is built on being connected with others, helping each other, forgetting to worry about looks or social media presence, beginning and ending the day with a prayer of thanksgiving for God’s caring Providence. There is a lot of joy in it, hardship as well, but it has an undercurrent of tranquil abandonment and connection, having a greater sense of both the need for and presence of God and each other.

I came to realise that there are forces beyond our control; not AI, but the forces of raw nature, of water and fire, earth and sky. There are rules that have to be obeyed so that life would bear fruit. There are consequences, there is responsibility. That is the world that God has put us in, and woe to us for bypassing it, wanting to take control over everything, thinking that we need to grasp it all instead of receiving it from Him.

I don’t quite remember where I read or heard this, but someone once said that the more people in a culture are obsessed with their identity, the more this culture has begun to lose its identity. I strongly believe that is true. It is typically our own Western world - the countries where we are most comfortable, meaning where we live most estranged from nature and our own humanity - that struggles with these questions. When I talked to people in the poor regions of Eastern Europe, they said that these kinds of issues simply don’t exist there, except perhaps in the biggest cities. They don’t ask questions about gender, about identifying oneself or anything like that. They simply live their lives, in poverty, yes, but I am beginning to wonder what real poverty is, and whether in the end they aren’t richer than we are here in Western Europe.

There is a passage in the visions of Mary of Agreda - a 17th-century mystic from Spain who had visions about the Blessed Virgin Mary which are recognised by the Church - about how God envisioned the creation of man. It is quite astonishing. The very first thing that God thought about as action outside of Himself was the creation of the humanity of the Word, of Jesus, immediately followed by the creation of His Mother. When God began the actual creation of the world and of Adam and Eve, He created them and everything while thinking of Jesus and Mary, making it all for them and making us in their image and likeness. Adam even literally looked like Jesus and Eve like Mary. To me, that is a beautiful illustration and confirmation of how God genuinely wants us to follow their example and even more powerfully, to contemplate them so that we might be transformed into them.

It happens occasionally, when I pray and God draws me into contemplation, that is, a delicious rest in Him, that I see in my mind’s eye how the face of Jesus is imprinted on mine. It is hard to believe that God calls us to such a high destiny, and yet it is true. The beauty of it all is that God gave us real faces to look at, human faces, that still reflect Himself in the most perfect way, to show us what our humanity is called to be like. We are all called to a glorious life, to literally shine with His glory. There is truly so much fulfilment in contemplating the splendour of heaven and of humanity as it is meant to be in the Word who became Man and in His Mother. There is such fullness of happiness in focusing on becoming like them. Why on earth, then, are we wasting our time and our attention on so many other things?

If anything at all, let this little post be your invitation to ponder these things and, if possible, to step back for a little bit yourself. Whether it is for a week or a month, trying to detach from “the Machine” as Kingsnorth calls it, might be the best thing you ever do in your life. See what it is like to learn how to make stuff with your hands, to go somewhere without Wi-Fi, to learn how to pray to Jesus and Mary. There is a whole other world and real life waiting for us, if only we dare to go for it.