Walking away when the going gets tough

A great reflection for Catholics who have remained in the Church, yet do so with sorrow or anger at the scandals and shame:

What do we do when we're depressed? What's our temptation when a dream is shattered, when we feel betrayed, and when it seems like the trust we've shown someone was childish naiveté?

Generally the temptation is to gather what pride we have left and walk away, away from that person, away from that place of rejection, away from the humiliation, and away from our former dream, all the while saying to ourselves: "I'll never trust in this way again! I've been burned, taken in, I now know the lesson!"

And, as we walk away from the place where we got hurt, what do we invariably walk towards?

We walk towards human consolation, towards compensation, towards something that looks like it will alleviate the hurt, soothe our wounded pride, or at least distract us from the pain. Sometimes, in fact, we're so wounded that what we walk towards is simple bitterness and despair. We unconsciously turn our backs on energy, family, community, happiness, faith, trust, and God. Life isn't worth living, why try!

In Luke's Gospel, we see this in the story of two, dispirited, disciples walking from away from Jerusalem towards Emmaus on Easter Sunday morning, unaware that Jesus had risen from the dead. Luke writes that on the morning of the Resurrection "two disciples were walking away from Jerusalem toward Emmaus, a village some seven miles away, their faces downcast." read more