Just Love

I found myself in confession the other day. My son was taking CCD classes and when I went to pick him up, realized there was a pennant mass with confessional following immediately after the service with twelve visiting priests from other parishes. I saw it as a perfect opportunity to slip in and get some of the guilt off my chest.
I rarely attend confession because it is usually at a strange time of day, maybe three to four p.m. on a Saturday, and it’s not like I’m overflowing with so many sins I need to unload them any chance I can get. Alright, these are bad excuses. I need to go to confession more. Bottom line.
I do believe confessions are useful. I believe in the power of talking about and facing the issues in your life that bring you down and make you sad. Sometimes something that might seem so insignificant and trivial to a stranger, is something that is literally eating us alive; something mean or bad that we said; some minor lie we told; taking some object that wasn’t ours; using another persons’ body for sexual gratification--these are all things that tear us up inside with guilt. But if we think of our neighbor doing these or a friend or someone on television, they often seem rather meaningless and petty, in the greater scheme of things.
I slipped into one of the long lines of parents and 14 and 15 year-old students that were forming in front of the confessional rooms.
Facing the priest brought naked fear to the surface. My heart was beating a mile a minute. I could feel the heat under my arms and the sweat drip down my lower back. My turn came. I entered the dark booth and saw the priest’s shadow hunched behind the mesh window, a little prayer bench in front of it with a simple prayer printed on card stock. I wasn’t too sure of the routine.
“Um, yeah, I don’t really do this too much. I’m sorry.”
“In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
We both crossed ourselves.
There was a pause and I could sense his uneasiness at my uneasiness. “Do you have anything to confess?”
“Nothing that big.”
Another pause. I thought of all the carnal desires that burned in my skull along with little lies I might have spoken or getting angry or only thinking of myself or innumerable other minor transgressions but they all seemed too small and petty to mention. I almost felt bad I didn’t have anything really big and heavy to lay on him. But there was the one thing. It was the biggest question of all, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, there was no way he could answer it.
“Sometimes I struggle with being led by certain desires. And this is really something that we’ve been dealing with for millions of years and even though I am aware of this constant struggle, still I find myself doing things I shouldn’t. Still I find myself being led into this darkness and ultimately reaching a point where I’m confounded by the utter pointlessness of it all. Like there is no meaning. Like once you have unraveled the deepest mystery at the bottom of all mysteries, it is just zero. Nothing. Emptiness. And I don’t want to think this way and thus yearn for annihilation, which is pretty much the death of the body but I can’t help reaching this point because I feel so overwhelmed and disheartened, and racked by such immense sorrow, the blackest, deepest sorrow, I don’t want to continue. I want to be free. So what is the meaning? Why the hell am I here?” I was about to scream: ‘what the fuck am I doing here?!’ “Is there some point to this endless struggling to satisfy my needs and seek happiness or will that only really lead to greater sorrow? In the end don’t you know we’re all just mowed under like so many blades of grass? I mean, I yearn for God’s love, but it feels so distant, so remote, so cold, so condescending, so maddeningly incomprehensible that my only recourse and natural goal as a human being on the planet earth is the roll myself up in a ball and tremble. Is that the destiny of man? Is that our great epic goal? Tremble for eternity? Is that my destiny? Please father, tell me something. Give me some encouragement. Drop me a bone. I am utterly confounded and clueless.”
There was a long pause and the priest sat up straight and I could make out his features a little better as the dim lamp in the corner hit him. He was pondering; maybe even troubled. His head was down. He was stumped. This was not a local priest. He was foreign, from India or the Middle East.
I thought I had really caught him off guard with this one. Today, after the endless train of masturbatory confessions, adulteress spouses, forged checks, throwing the old folks in the rest home, stealing the neighbor’s newspaper, where this priest had been spiritually lolled into a knee-jerk, quick-fix, magic bullet prayer response, now he finally had something to think about. You couldn’t just slide a prayer across a table and say, “here’s the answer”. There was no way he was going to wriggle out of this one. There was no “How to Answer The Question of The Meaning of Life”, in the Catechism Desk Reference For Priests. I almost felt smug and was about to stand up leave without another word spoken. That would have satisfied me; the only true answer to all questions: silence.
I looked down at the prayer on the little card in front of me. I took it in hand and scanned the text. I waited, almost mockingly, ready for him to tell me how many times to chant the obligatory prayer. Maybe throw in a few “Hail Marys” and “Our Fathers” for good measure. I had this guy up against the ropes. There was no way back from “Queer Street” now.
“Just love,” the priest finally muttered.
“Excuse me?”
“Just love. That’s it.”
“Just love?”
“Yes, just love. That’s really the only think Jesus wants from us and that’s his primary teaching. First and formost, “just love”.
I was floored. My God, yes! It was so simple. Yet so perfect. Just love.
“There is really nothing that you must do or achieve. You just need to love more.”
The dark clouds of doubt burned instantly away, revealing only bright sunshine. It was as if I knew this all along, way in the back of my head somewhere, but couldn’t remember it. Like an old book in a library, in some back dusty store room. All it needed was a hand to point it out and a quick dust off. “Just love”. Wasn’t this what all the major religions were telling us from the beginning? Wasn’t this at the heart of all dogmas, creeds and divine law?
Sometimes you have to dig a little bit to find it, but love is always there somewhere, no matter how cleverly hidden among the brambles.