Lent Day 4: Joy and Fear

Fr. Robert Barron’s Lent Reflection focuses on an extraordinary woman named Mother Teresa, who lived out the joy of her mission of caring for the poorest of the poor. Fr. Barron says in his reflection that we all want joy. According to Aristotle, mankind’s ultimate end is to find happiness. However, we make the mistake of trying to fill up that missing part of ourselves.

My friend Joseph makes a case for this on his Lent reflection.

With the popularization of things like Facebook, Snapchat, and vlogging, one could make the case that today’s generation has become one of the most self-absorbed and self-centered generations of all time.

But I don’t think that’s really the point. And I would argue that my generation doesn’t exactly deserve that kind of criticism. I think the point is that we seem to be living in a culture that constantly promotes the fear of being forgotten.

Here comes the paradox of Mother Teresa’s lifestyle. The reason she is remembered is not because she actively sought attention for herself, but because she focused on giving her time and effort towards helping others. The joy of her calling is easy to see if you’ve ever seen pictures of her. Even when she was in a period of total darkness, nobody could tell because she made the best of that horrible situation by emptying herself more.

My photo today is of a gift my brother got me at SXSW. It’s a Companion Cube! In the end of Portal 2, it was GLADOS’s sign of good faith to Chell that (unless Portal 3 is created) GLADOS won’t try and get Chell ever again after Chell finally gets out of the Aperture Science labs. This has nothing to do with what I posted earlier, but I did promise that I would show what I picked for my 365grateful project and I’m gonna hold myself to it.