Signs of the nature of 'I'

Tranquility...our attitude toward our humanity

Lent. A journey toward Easter. But often, in this journey, we feel bogged down by our humanity. And we often arrange our Lenten practices as means of overcoming and subduing such humanity.

Julián Carrón views it differently. He writes how many times are we tempted to look at the concrete humanity in which we find ourselves—for example, the unease, the dissatisfaction, the sadness, the boredom—as an obstacle, a complication, an impediment to the realization of what we desire! We get angry with ourselves and with reality…

He goes on to say that we live in the illusion of going ahead by cutting away a piece of ourselves. Instead, we should realize that the very struggles we have in our human nature are there to show us that here, in this life, in this world, we do not have a lasting city. Unease, dissatisfaction, sadness, and boredom are not symptoms of an illness to treat with medicines; this happens more and more often in a society that mistakes disquiet of the heart for panic and anxiety. They are rather, signs of what the nature of the “I” is. The “I” that is created with a capacity for the infinite.

And so, the humanity we discover in ourselves is not something to cut out of our lives (even if we could!) but rather the signature of God written deep in our hearts, a signature that says we are made for something bigger. Carrón continues, The real obstacle on our journey is not our concrete humanity, but [our] disregard for it. Everything in us cries out [for] the need for something to fill the void.

It sounds like we are better off listening to our hearts. Because it will lead us to understand, we have been made for greater things.