Sex and the Mystery of Gravy

by Susan Fox and “Grace”

“The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib, which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. The man said, "This is now bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man." For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh…” (Gen 2:23-25)

On Thanksgiving Day, I was stirring the gravy on the stove, and I realized that when I was a child how gravy was made was a big mystery to me.

I watched so many women stirring, stirring, stirring and putting in this ingredient and that, but how do you make gravy I wondered. What do you start with?

I didn’t learn until I went to France when I was 19 years old. When I arrived in France, I couldn’t boil water. My overprotective mother fed me all my life and I studied, studied, studied. That was my job.

But when I got to France, my relationship with the Americans there did not go well. So I cut those ties and hung out with Danielle, mother of two little boys and a former schoolteacher. She taught me cooking, child rearing and French for that was all she spoke. Voila! Mystery of Gravy solved.

But recently another mystery was handed to me on a platter. A man asked me, “Susan, why am I gay?” 

Now that question sits on my plate like unmade gravy. I really don’t know, I thought, but a large percentage of people who self-identify according to their homosexuality have told sociologists that they were sexually abused as children.  Others have said they entered the lifestyle through pornography. Ah, now I was on firmer ground. There was at least one ingredient to this recipe I understood.

I have friends, who were sexually abused as children. The abuse caused them to be sexually broken, and they have had to struggle their whole life long with various sexual addictions. The disordered effects on their adult lives are horrific. 

A human being’s first sexual experience impresses itself on that person, and you don’t shake that no matter how much you pray, no matter what kind of efforts you make on your own behalf. That’s why God said,  "If anyone causes one of these little ones -- those who believe in me -- to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” (Matt 18:6)

So the Catholic Church highly recommends that we make our first sexual experience our wedding night. It is to save us untold grief and questions like, “Susan, why am I gay?” But unfortunately, sometimes as children we don’t get a choice because God gave us and all the adults around us something called “free will.”

I have a friend, and I will call her Grace, who was molested as a child repeatedly by a family member. Grace felt like a prostitute, and before she married she had illicit relationships that mimicked her molestations.  She ended up in a hospital after an affair broke up.

Sex outside of a loving marriage is degradation and humiliation.  Inside marriage, you bring the baggage of your past life. Lifelong joyful chastity is your best hope for a fulfilling existence on earth.

But life is never ordered perfectly. Did you know that often children who have been treated as Grace or people who have fallen into the habit of reading pornography have stronger inclinations to the sin of lust than other people who haven’t had these experiences? One case is clearly involuntary and the other is voluntary, but in both cases something evil has entered your life.

My husband and I told our son, “Sex is like Pandora’s Box. Open it up before it’s time and there is nothing you can do but deal with the consequences.”

But there is a spiritual solution to sexual addictions. We are both spiritual and corporal beings. When we have sex –even if we are not a willing participant – we bond with that person. There is a lifelong spiritual connection. And it seems like God wanted to emphasize the point on the physical side for He created the bonding hormone Oxytocin – primarily to unite mother and child during and after birth, but scientists are discovering this hormone is related to sexual climax and unitive intimacy with your partner.

In order to be healed of disordered sexual inclinations – even after we are struggling to live a chaste life -- we have to spiritually cut the ties to all our previous sexual partners. Not only that, but if we have spent time looking at pornography, we can actually have formed a spiritual bond with “Miss April” or “Mr. May.” Everything that happens in the porn star’s life bleeds into ours, unless we cut the tie. But that only applies to men, who are sight-oriented. Women’s porn is usually in written form, and those ties must be cut as well.

This is the book I found to deal with those situations:  “The Healing of Families: How to Pray Effectively for Those Stubborn Personal and Familial Problems” by Fr. Yozefu-B. Ssemakula. Good things come from Uganda.  He does retreats around the United States. Go to www.healingoffamilies.com to find the book and Father’s schedule.

Father Yozefu -- we call him Fr. Joe for that’s what his name means in Ugandan -- dealt with all kinds of issues but the key is that your family or you can invite a sort of twistedness into your life that can only be thrown out by an exorcism prayer you can say yourself. Someone invited the evil one into your life, and he has to be shown the door.

I tell the following story, not because I am accusing anyone of a crime, but because the following crime demonstrates that a bond is created in the sexual act – even if one partner is not willing. Shortly after I went to Father Yozefu’s retreat, I watched a program on EWTN (Catholic television). A courageous young woman told the story of how she had been drugged and raped on a cruise ship. She didn’t remember the rape, but she found herself with the strange desire to find the rapist and maybe see if they could have a relationship. She didn’t understand why she had that inclination, but I was prepared to understand and accept it because of what Fr. Joe taught us. Even a one-event drugged rape created a spiritual bond. How much more would a fully participatory sexual relationship create a bond over time?

The good side to the story, however, was that as she struggled to deal with the aftermath of that experience, she had a vision of Christ bruised and laying in a pool of urine – the way she was found. She understood when she was raped, Jesus suffered the same in His own Body. This brought her incredible healing. So should all of us rejoice to know that Christ accepts into His own Body all of our sufferings.

Grace, my wounded friend and a convert to Catholicism, added this to my gravy recipe:

“I think it is also important to say that Catholics believe that sex is a mystery. A mystery is not a cypher, something we know nothing about. It is something that we can know in part, using our reason and God's revelation. Some Catholics, like Pope John Paul II in his Theology of the Body, understand that sex is a Mystery with a capital “M,” like the Incarnation.  In other words, sex is holy.  Catholics really should capitalize the word Sex whenever they use it to mean what is properly ordered according to God's plan.  But almost no one talks about that kind of sex.  Although humans are obsessed with sex, we actually know very little about it, whether ordered or disordered.

But here is one thing that some people, enlightened by God, have learned about sex:  since our bodies and our spirits are one, sex really does create a spiritual bond, even "bad" sex.  We are linked forever, body and soul, with all sexual partners.  And having multiple partners feels wrong.  Sex cries out for exclusivity, because it is the Holy of Holies where God creates True Love and new Life -- where He creates the image of the Blessed Trinity on earth, the Family.  But when rape or incest or fornication or homosexual acts touch the virgin body/soul, then God's Image is distorted, and the person suffers irreparable loss.

Yes, they may find healing, but they will carry the scars as long as they live.  In this world, because of the twisted culture in which we live, there are very few pure, innocent, intact souls.  We are all walking wounded, to some degree.  It is just the degree of suffering that differentiates us.

This man wants to know why he has same-sex inclinations ... if we are honest, we must say we do not know the answer.  Why does God permit His holy design to be thwarted?  Why does He permit the innocent to be violated?  This is the only real challenge to faith in God:  the mystery of evil.

Sex remains a mystery.  Why did God allow my sexuality to be warped by the world?  Why is the sexual urge so overwhelming, so out of proportion?  Why do I do the thing I do not want to do, to paraphrase St. Paul? God, why can't you take this cross away? The few glimpses we get of real Sex, the way it is meant to be, only torment us more with our inability to attain that vision.

Some people speak about transcendent joy in sex, but the only taste I ever got of that, (due to my sexual woundedness), was when I held my new born babies in my arms.  That was holy, transcendent joy, a foretaste of Heaven.

And that joy must have been God's special grace to me, because I know that many mothers have that joy denied to them as well, because they are too wounded, or else their culture robs it from them.  Why does God permit so many mothers to feel no joy at the birth of their children? Why do so many mothers destroy the life that is within them through abortion, or have to watch as others destroy them?

   

Remember that old bible of the Sexual Revolution, The Joy of Sex?  Well, God meant to give us the True Joy of Sex, the kind of transcendent joy I experienced at the birth of my children.  But instead, the world, the flesh, and the devil attack us poor humans at every turn, and sex brings us sorrow.  Immeasurable sorrow.  Why does God permit this?  He meant to give us joy and life, but instead, with sex we find violence, lust, frustration, disease, disappointment, heartbreak, and death. 

Even the best of marriages knows some of this because we are all wounded to some degree.  Why, God?  This is our cri de coeur.

Still, God gave me the gift of faith, and through that lens of faith I dimly saw what His plan was for me, and I struggled towards it like a half-blind person, stumbling every step of the way.  And he gave me a good husband to love, and three beautiful little incarnate souls to care for.  God created my family with just a little clumsy co-operation from my husband and me.  Why did we receive this grace when others did not?  A mystery? It was certainly nothing we deserved. Does it make me feel like I'm better than other people struggling with their sexual woundedness?  I hope and pray it does no such thing.  I hope it gives me humility."

Grace’s comments show us that sex belongs and finds its fulfillment in a family setting. And she is correct there is a transcendent aspect of sex. Used in the context of marriage, it creates a happy lifelong bond with your spouse, and this bond cradles the newborn lives of your children. It seems like I’ve found more ingredients to make good gravy.

But I had to laugh as I remembered when I was a young woman, my theology professor at a Jesuit University, tried to develop a theology of sex, but he didn’t do a very good job of it because he was focused on the physical aspect alone. When he described the sexual climax, he said with poetic depth, “Cosmic Awareness. Oceanic Consciousness.” I believed him then because I had never had sex! But I’ve been happily married for 30 years, and I don’t know what he was talking about.  

So I asked my husband of 30 years what he thought about sex.  Lawrence Fox said, “Sex (with my wife) is bone-deep consolation. “  According to him, the words of the Book of Genesis, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh,” resonates deeply with every man, who reads Adam's words when he first met Eve. The man reading this in Genesis recognizes that woman was created to complement man in order to live in the image and likeness of God and to fulfill God’s command to be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over the earth. “Man can’t do that alone. He can’t do that with another man, ” Lawrence said.

Well, Lawrence, that is not how women view sex with their husbands at all! “Nope,” I said, “We just like the attention – passionate male attention in the context of a faithful marriage.”  Our conversations are great too.

Not everyone is going to be married. But joyful chastity offers men and women the opportunity for a fulfilling life. So I thought, I wish I could interview a celibate priest living a life of joyful chastity. That is not going to happen in this life, so I remembered a retreat I had attended where the priest spoke about his suffering and loneliness. His solution: The Holy Spirit. He gestured and wrapped the Holy Spirit around him like a blanket. “He is my Comforter,” the priest said simply.

Remember to put that ingredient in your gravy.

Great video resource for All:

We are More! A Catholic Response to Gay Pride

SEE CHRIST IN EVERYONE YOU MEET!

by Susan Fox

"The greatest poverty is no love!" (Mother Teresa of Calcutta) 

See and Serve the Person of Our Lord Jesus Christ in everyone you meet.

Who would believe that such an innocuous statement could be so controversial to a Christian!

The Bible states clearly, “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.” (Matt 25:40)

For Catholics, the witness of the life of Mother Teresa of Calcutta is enough to believe the axiom that Christ is among us in the distressing disguise of the poor -- waiting to be loved.  

Pope Francis hugs Vinicio Riva

Pope Francis continues her witness. On Nov. 6, 2013, he hugged and rubbed the head of a man disfigured by neurofibromatosis. “I felt like I was in paradise. My heart was bursting,” said Vinicio Riva, 53, describing what happened when the pope hugged him. He was impressed that the pope didn’t hesitate to touch him, something his own father is reluctant to do.

But such actions were very firmly challenged by a Bible-believing Christian businessman I met online, who argued vehemently that we could not see Christ in others until they accept Jesus Christ as their Savior!

Did Vincenza Riva already accept Christ as His Lord and Savior? If not, the pope must have made a grave mistake in embracing him!

The Christian businessman rightfully said we have to make judgements. Paul and Timothy had to judge, silence and rebuke Hymenaeus and Philetus because they denied the resurrection, a heresy. (2Timothy 2: 14-19) No, we didn’t disagree on that at all.

But when it came to the man dressed as a woman who came to his church, he steadfastly refused to see Christ in that man because clearly he wasn’t saved yet.  

But how will the man, who self-identifies as homosexual, ever receive Christ -- if Christians continue to look at him like there is something wrong with him? Would you convert to Christianity if everyone at Church treated you like a pariah?

I ended up pleading for the man dressed as a woman: “Please love that "gay" man,” I wrote. “By this I mean, use a kind word, look him in the eye. (I don't mean that you should imply at any point that his lifestyle is okay.)”

“When you face Jesus Christ at the pearly gates that's what He'll ask you about -- how you treated that man. That man is Jesus in the distressing disguise of the poor. Poor doesn't mean poor in material means. Poor in this case means unloved. But his dress is telling you he wants desperately to be loved. And how we treat men like that depends on whether Christ will label us sheep or goats at the judgment. The goats get kicked to hell. The sheep go to heaven. And the sheep are the ones who use kind words to the unloved in this life," I wrote online. They also hug men with neurofibromatosis.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta said the greatest poverty is no love. And the modern world -- seemingly so rich in material goods -- is very much afflicted with that kind of poverty.   

Actually, what the Christian man and I were arguing about was a very subtle distinction in Scripture. This is one of the many precautions that Jesus gave us to prevent sin: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.  For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?  How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (Matt 7: 2-5)

And then there’s the way He taught us to pray:

“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Doesn’t that mean we in justice cannot expect forgiveness unless we forgive others, maybe even for their way of life?

Yet there are numerous examples of judging in the Bible. Timothy, Paul and Titus threw people out of the early Church for transgressions like living with your father's wife, and speaking heresy.

And we certainly don’t want to devolve into relativists --  people who think there is no right and wrong.  Why and when is it okay to judge?

“No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.  Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thorn bushes, or grapes from briers.  A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” (Luke 6:43-45)

So we can judge, not the man, but his fruits. We can look at his works and his dress, and come to a conclusion about his actions. We still see the Person of Christ in his face, but when my Christian friend faced the issue of which bathroom to let him use, he objectively knew he could not use the men’s or the women’s room unless it is empty. Now a judgment has been made based on the man’s fruits. He is dressed as a woman. Lovingly escort him to any restroom – just get everyone else out.

When my Christian friend faced this dilemma, instead of disliking the "gay" man, he prayed for him. So I said, “You did see and serve the Person of Christ in that gay man. You prayed for him! Good job.” 

One time I was checking into a hotel, and I was too tired to look at the person who was checking me in, but I noticed his arm was that of an elderly man. So I finished the paperwork he had given me, and I said, "God bless you, Sirrrrrr!" That is, it was like a wind blew through me and said the word "Sir" very drawn out. It identified the man as a man. I didn't intend to do that. But after that happened, I noticed the man was wearing a dress and had a blond ponytail. For some reason, God chose me to recall the man to his actual identity.

The next couple of days when I saw him, and he saw me, he was very nervous, bounced up and down and talked non-stop. The Holy Spirit had corrected him, but I continued to see and serve the Person of Christ in that man. I didn't think "evil man." Instead I turned to God and prayed for him, just like my Christian friend did. My online friend’s response was a good Christian one. Love the sinner. Hate the sin. 



This topic is vitally important to my friend because he is a Christian businessman. “How do you think you can sell goods or wait on people if you have to make a judgment every time you meet someone as to their spiritual worthiness?” I asked.

My mother supported us as I was growing up because my father was dead when I was four. She worked in real estate and later sold appliances. She actually made a point of seeing the Person of Christ in those she met. This was evident in her voice, her manner and her concern for their needs. As a result, her sales rate was higher than anyone else's in the office.  



Now I learned this lesson in 30 years of doing door-to-door evangelization. One time, I forgot I had to see the Person of Christ in the person opening the door, and a man wearing a satan T-Shirt with no shoes opened the door. I looked down at his feet, and then up at his T-shirt. Big mistake! I could see him literally close the door of his heart. He would have nothing to do with Jesus Christ because His representative  -- little me -- forgot to look in his face and see Christ.

A priest friend of mine visited a man on death row in prison. This man spit in his face. He wanted nothing to do with the priest. Father had a short temper, but he said, "God bless you,"  left and went home. Discussing the matter with God later, God convinced him to return and reveal to the serial killer the one good thing he had done in his life. And this thing was something no one could know but God.

So Father returned and reminded the man that when he was 9 years old, he had shared his sweet with another child. Now this was India. People were very poor. And children rarely got their hands on a dessert item; so sharing such a thing was really marvelous. The serial killer began crying. He repented of his sins.  God sees differently than we do. He didn’t want the priest to remind the man of all the people he killed, he wanted the priest to remind the man of his goodness. 

One always sees Jesus Christ as offering His Sacred Heart to us in love. So I and many other Christians, including St. Catherine of Sienna,  have asked God to exchange our hearts for Jesus’ Heart so we can love like He does.

The story of the serial killer taught me to see with the eyes of God the Father. In the Book of Genesis, every thing He created, He seemed to pause and look at it after it was made: “And God saw that it was good.” This phrase is repeated through all the steps of creation. So if we stop and look with the Father’s eyes at each person, we will see what good God has done in his soul. This look of love – coming from a Christian -- is an invitation to know Christ.

I reminded my Christian businessman that St. Martin of Tours was a soldier, and not a Christian, when he encountered a naked beggar by the side of the road. He had not yet accepted Jesus as His Lord and Savior as defined by Protestants. But could we fail to see Christ in Martin before his conversion? He took his sword and cut his cloak in two, giving half to the shivering man. That night Christ appeared to him as a beggar wearing the other half of Martin's cloak, and Martin believed in Christ and was baptized.

Then Pope Francis meets and hugs Vinicio Riva in St. Peter’s Square. “I’m not contagious, but (the pope) didn’t know that. But he did it, period: he caressed my whole face and while he was doing it, I only felt love. First, I kissed his hand, while he caressed my head and wounds with his other hand,” Vinicio said.

“Then he pulled me toward him, hugging me tight and kissing my face. My head was against his chest and his arms were wrapped around me. He held me so tightly, cuddling me, and he didn’t let go. I tried to speak, to say something, but I wasn’t able to: I was too choked up. It lasted just a little more than a minute, but, for me, it seemed like forever. The pope’s hands are so soft. Soft and beautiful. And his smile (is) bright and wide.”

Meeting the pope was a transforming experience for Vinicio Riva. That's what I love about Pope Francis. He does see and serve the Person of Jesus Christ in the little people.  

Jesus said, "Go preach the gospel to all nations." Sometimes, for the gospel to be preached, all that is required is a look of love. 

THE MYSTERIOUS WORM OF MATTHEW PIKE: Discovering the Image of God Within

(editor’s note: This piece is dedicated to the owners and patrons of Kuma’s Corner, Purveyors of fine BOVINE GENOCIDE, Chicago, Illinois, in honor of their November “Sleep” burger with turkey and cranberry jelly. Yum)

“As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone ...But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon those who fear him. (Psalm 103)

by Susan Fox

American rock musician Matthew Pike has found a mysterious part of himself – something that was missing during the years he was blacked out from alcohol and dope.

 

Doom Metal Guitarist Matt Pike

“I’m starting to find out who I really am, what I’m worth and the value of my being,” said the 41-year-old Denver native in a 2012 interview with Vincent Duke for Pelecanus.net. “That’s an important thing for a person to realize.”

And surprisingly, it appears that the guitarist for the doom metal band, Sleep, is finding out that being human and being alive is actually something wonderful.

“I’ve been writing in this journal… some of it is very Hunter S. Thompson. It’s realism. It has comedy, and it’s kind of depressing, too, because of the way my life has been,” said Pike, who admits he is still struggling with alcohol addiction. “It kinda makes me sad that I blacked myself out for half of it.”

“I just feel like I’m starting to get grounded where I was lost for a really long time.” His face beaming with happiness, Pike added, “I asked my girl to marry me in Rome. She said, ‘Yes.’  So it will be the first time I’ve ever been married. ”

His partner on this pilgrimage to the heart of his humanity is a mysterious worm, the subject of his latest song creation, De Vermis Mysteriis. “That’s what that record is – it’s the Book of the Worm or the mysteries of the worm. It’s about digging under the earth or underneath the groundation of your soul and finding something. It’s not about how rock star I am. Being human is finding what you really are.”

I wonder if he would be surprised to know that a number of other people have courageously ridden the worm into their own soul and found something beautiful there.

Harking back to Psalm 103 where man is compared to the flower of the field, which lasts only so long as the wind passes over it, St. Theresa -- known as The Little Flower -- said, “If a little flower could speak, it would say, simply, what the good God has done for her.” Indeed the French saint lived only 24 years in an obscure Carmelite convent in Lisieux in the late 1800s. Yet she is known and loved worldwide.

Her life inspired a Vietnamese Redemptorist brother, Marcel Van, to follow the same vocation of hidden love. He died at the age of 31 in a North Vietnamese re-education camp after he voluntarily returned to the dangerous Communist Zone in 1954.  If anyone asked why he wanted to return to North Viet Nam, he answered, “I am going so that there is someone who loves God in the middle of the Communists.”

Brother Marcel Van

He described his life using the same imagery Theresa did, saying that if the flower could speak, “she would frankly admit that she is a fragile creature, quick to fade but she would also be proud of her beauty, of the crispness of her colors, of her delicate scent and of all the other qualities that nature has adorned her with.”

Isn’t Pike’s mysterious worm showing him this same reality? Under the soil of his heart, is he not finding something truly beautiful?

Van continued, “I tell myself that my soul is also like one of God’s flowers. It is God himself who has preordained all that I possess and all the events of my life. I can also therefore recount all the graces with which the good God has embellished my soul, so that together … we can sing a canticle of praise to the infinite mercy of God.”

Pike added, “I can’t summon angels or demons. I can’t do a lot of these things that you think you can when you are in that state.  I found a (different) part of myself. I want to be able to express myself through my instrument. And I’m going to strap that guitar on every day and I’m going to work hard to make a life for my children and my wife.”

“I’m going to make a lot of people, who are sad, feel something. I’m going to make a lot of people, who are angry, feel something. I’m going to make a lot of people, who are happy, feel something,” he concluded.

Is that a strange ambition for a guitarist for a group called “Sleep?”  Sleep after all is part of the doom metal scene where the smog of pot fills the room.  Its lyrics speak repeatedly about escape. “Drop out of life with bong in hand. Follow the smoke to-uh the riff-filled land.” (Refrain for Sleep’s Dopesmoker lyrics)

No, even sleep is full of emotion.  Doom metal enthusiasts are seeking to experience the same emotions every human being longs for. That’s why they go to concerts.

“Life is always a good.  This is an instinctive perception and a fact of experience, and man is called to grasp the profound reason why this is so,” said Pope John Paul II in the Gospel of Life published in 1995. He also lived through great tribulation, the Nazi and Communist occupation of Poland, the death of his parents, and the Nazi Holocaust which robbed him of personal friends.

“The life which God gives man is quite different from the life of all other living creatures, inasmuch as man, although formed from the dust of the earth, is a manifestation of God in the world, a sign of his presence, a trace of his glory,” the pope said, adding the famous quote from St. Irenaeus of Lyons, “Man, living man, is the glory of God… in man there shines forth a reflection of God himself.”

Addressing God, the author of Psalm 8 says, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have established; (I think) What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him little less than the angels, and you have crowned him with glory and honor.”

The Good Shepherd

How does God regard the human flower? Jesus Himself answered this question in the parable of the lost sheep. If a man has 100 sheep, and one goes astray, does he care? Jesus said, “Yes, he leaves the 99 and goes to look for the one that was lost.” And if he finds it, he rejoices over it more than the 99 who never went astray.

But that is God’s thinking, not ours. If a man is a modern commercial sheepherder, he will be indifferent to one sheep out of 100. He would probably use a mathematical formula to figure out that his profit only went down marginally. Then he’d forget about the sheep and go to bed. That’s how modern man thinks.  But not the Good Shepherd. He would go out and search.

"You don't have the right to despise yourself. You don't have the right," said Fr. Felicien Mbala at Mass today in Denver. He referred to the fact that God Himself has paid the price for us in His own Blood. "For God so loved the world He gave His only Son. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us."

This happened 56 years ago, but I remember it like it happened yesterday: I was four years old sitting in the back seat of the car, moments before the accident that took my father's life. I looked up from reading a comic book. My father was giving my mother one long look of love, and she returned that look with her whole heart. In that instant, my parents taught me this important lesson: Life is good. Life is beautiful. Make every moment count. Share it with the ones that you love because eventually life is over.

 “Long live traveler

Winds now die

Dark place creature

Destined night.”

(Matt Pike in De Vermis Mysteriis)

Another source for similar thoughts:
God Searches for the Lost With a Special Love, Pope Francis says