The Light We Leave Behind

Lent is now upon us, and if you’ve been to Mass recently, you probably heard some variation of, “thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.” I cannot accurately speculate about what you think of during that time, but I don’t tend to focus on my own mortality, but on those whom I have already lost.

I am drawn to think of our lives as a shared journey, and one that we hope might conclude in a mutual destination. Some of our dearest friends have already departed from us. They have become that dust to which we aspire with cautious resignation. We will likely lose more still. Thus, returning to dust, which you might have last heard referenced at a graveside service, is a wound that never fully closes until we join them.

Sometimes, we can understand the last act only by reflection on the first. So we might better understand our loved ones and where they might be, by pondering their creation. For God to truly be God, for Him to create from nothing, everything that He creates must necessarily reflect Him. He did not fashion us with materials that he found from another creator, so all that we are (and our loved ones were) is indicative of Him in some way. All the Good that we can choose not only leads back to Him, but reflects Him. It mirrors Him. Just as the creations of every painter, sculptor, writer, and composer each reflect a facet of his soul, so too can people, as creations, reflect different aspects of their Creator.

Therefore, each individual can, in cooperating with God’s grace, reflect His light into the world, as they were supposed to. Those whom we have lost remind us not only of their good, but of the Goodness to whom they pointed. The best of who they were, to us and to the greater world around them, was a light that we might follow to get to the Creator who made them. In God’s mercy, it is in whose company they now share.

Potentially, as we shift to think about our own loves, souls, and deaths, we might hope that we could be remembered the same way. If only we too could be good in such a manner that people could think of us and understand our Maker better—they might love God better. Imagine if we could point the way Home, with the way we live, and the way we love.

Alas, perhaps the thought pains you as it does me, as we recognize that we are not yet who we should be. If the thought, and the failure, makes your eyes water too, take solace in another Lent in which to make those changes that will lead us to the right Destination, and point the way for others. The ashes might take on an extended meaning if we accept this season as an obligation to burn away those parts of ourselves that we know should not exist, those fragments that dim the light we are supposed to be refracting.

Godspeed on your journey. Have a blessed Lent.