Friday, April 11, 2014

Are You Fully Alive?

As the semester winds down it seems impossible to keep up with the pace.  In the never ending check list of commitments, assignments, papers, and tests I think that we as students here forget that our purpose here is much deeper than all of the busyness and schoolwork.  I have a secret for you…we are here to fall in love.

Now before you get upset with me for suggesting that all of those tuition dollars are going towards and elaborate dating scene, I should clarify what I mean by falling in love.  I do not mean this in the romantic sense, but rather, the practical sense.  This sense of falling in love is finding who you are at your very core.  This love is what will sustain you in your friendships, your relationships, your career, and beyond.  This love is what makes you feel alive.  Falling in love in this sense is best described in the beautiful words of Pedro Arrupe, S.J.

“Nothing is more practical than finding God,
than falling in Love in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with,
what seizes your imagination,
will affect everything.
It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends,
what you read,
whom you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in Love,
stay in love,
and it will decide everything.”
- Pedro Arrupe, S.J.

So, with that in mind I ask you, what makes you feel alive?
It’s a difficult question, but an essential one to say the least. 
What is it that seizes your imagination?
What gets you out of bed in the morning?
What do you think of when you are thinking about nothing at all?

There is something that makes each and every person here come alive in a beautiful and unique way.  My challenge to you is to find what makes you feel alive and to embrace it, pursue it, and let it guide you.  Do not let your God-given passion be kept as only a portion of your being…let it consume you and radiate from you. 

“The glory of God is the human person fully alive.” –St. Irenaeus

AMDG


Adam Dirnberger is the SERVE Social Justice Intern in Campus Ministry.