Fr. Dwight Longenecker1. What about the guy who married a virgin, but didn’t tell her he had led a wildly promiscuous life and proceeded on their wedding night to give her three STDs. Then when she became chronically ill and the health costs were going up left her with two kids and went off with another man.
2. Let me tell you the story of the woman who had a mid-life crisis and planned for six years to divorce her rich husband. Egged him on until he got a bit violent then staged a ‘police call’ against him so he’d have a record, then served papers on him a month after he got kicked out of his high level job and the same week that his father died. She proceeded to take him to the cleaners, ruined his reputation by blaming him publicly for having ‘an affair’ (it was an ’emotional’ affair in which he chatted on FB with an old high school girlfriend) she cleaned him out financially, took the kids and the house and embarked cheerfully on a ‘new career and new life.’
3. Then there’s the man who realized his wife’s mother and grandmother had all died a slow death of a degenerative disease, then the week after she was diagnosed with the same disease, and lost her job because of her disability and didn’t have insurance he served the divorce papers and tootled off with the house, the kids–everything.
4. Then there’s the woman who married a Catholic, knew he was against abortion and wanted a large family, but secretly aborted three of his children before presenting him with that news after he found out about the affair she’d been having for years with his best friend.
5. Let’s move to finances and hear about the guy who quietly and legally bilked his bank clients of millions of dollars over the years. He was a pillar of society, a leader in his church, on the boards of plenty of charities, and his victims were widows, ordinary workers with pensions and families who trusted him to manage their money.
I could go on. Added to the horrors of the broken marriage, wrecked finances, devastated children very often the criminals in question retained their position in society and even went from glory to glory re-inventing themselves as delightful people who everyone wanted to be friends with because they were rich.
What about my theory that addicts are everywhere? I see the alcoholics and the drug addicts–the ones in prison and the ones outside. But I say to them, “Your addiction is to a false happiness. You are addicted to something that gives you false pleasure and comfort.” When you look at it that way, what about the people who are addicted to the drug of worldly success? Oh the heady high of winning the big game of life and being a shining success. What a kick to be richer than everyone else! Let’s mention the people who are addicted to their own vain self image. What a high to not just look good, but look better than everybody else! I could go on: the drug of money, the drug of self righteousness, the drug of sex and porn addiction, the drug of people thinking well of me, the drug of laziness and complacency, the drug of comfort eating, the drug of alcohol…
All of these are false loves. All of them are false comforts and false loves.
Excuse the weary tirade, if that’s what it sounds like, but the point of it all is to say, “There is only one thing that will satisfy. Only one love that will fill the empty heart. It is the Divine Mercy. It is the Divine Love.”
Seek that, and everything else will be added to you.
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