By SISTER ANNE MARIE WALSH, SOLT
Blessed Carlo Acutis, the young Catholic, Italian website designer who died of leukemia at 15 years of age, while living a holy life in the modern world, observed that “All people are born as originals but many die as photocopies.” This is a problem if we understand that God has a master plan for our happiness but that many people do not choose, either knowingly or unknowingly, to follow it.
Blessed Carlo understood this. His plan for life was to stay close to Jesus and allow Jesus to unfold his life and its unique purpose. It wasn’t a long life but it was one in which he could say, “…in eternal life, something extraordinary awaits us.” “I am happy to die because I have lived my life without wasting a minute on those things which do not please God.”
He also understood that to know himself, the best way was to come to know Jesus more and more deeply in the Blessed Sacrament, and that Jesus would then teach him about himself and lead him to heaven.
So how do we become fake versions or photocopies of someone else? First, by following the natural interference our own egos cause in this area. Second, by disconnecting from Christ. Third, by listening to the enemy of our soul. He devotes his time to isolating us from the Lord.
He is always about the work of trying to thwart God’s plan in every way he can. The devil is a consummate meddler and he excels in deception, in offering us cheap knockoffs of the treasures and riches the Lord offers. Counterfeits!
Everything that God does for us and wants for us, is targeted. The evil one will offer us anything to keep us from following Our Lord because he knows how powerful a true believer is against his kingdom. The Holy Spirit of God in the believer comes up against the kingdom of darkness and stands as an implacable wall against the reach of Satan into our lives. Nonetheless, there will be incredible opposition and at times, almost relentless attempts to divert and distract us.
How often the roots of a problem can be traced back to the fall. The attempt to offer a cheap alternative to God’s gifts for the sake of deception is evident from the beginning. Dan Burke (founder of the Avila Institute for Spirituality) points out that the original temptation is clearly worded in this kind of language.
Regarding the forbidden fruit, the devil says to Adam and Eve “Eat this, and you will become like God.” We know this happens only in the Eucharist! So, what is the devil doing? He’s offering a false Eucharist!
Already in the garden, his modus operandi is revealed, an MO that is powered by lies to divert and isolate the gullible and spiritually immature. You can believe that for every gift, every mystery of God, there is something lifeless, deadly actually, that the devil promotes in its place.
In his resurrection, Jesus makes all things new! The Easter season is a perfect time to let the Lord divest us of all of our facades, our pretenses, our unreal aspirations, wherever they come from and to allow him to ground us in reality, the reality that our Risen Lord has given us everything He has to give and withholds nothing from us.
To fall prey to the temptations of the world, our own vanity, or the machinations of the evil one, simply means we are not rooted in reality but rather in fantasy and base appetites and desires that hold us back from the true glory God waits to bestow on us.
This kind of self-examination requires the Lord’s help. G.K. Chesterton wryly noted that going to church every Sunday isn’t enough. It doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
We don’t easily recognize the subtle lies we have constructed parts of our lives on. Jesus needs to show us just as he did the disciples in the Resurrection, a concrete vision of a truly transformed life in him. That’s where we’re headed. Jesus risen is what true life looks like. May your own life come to manifest his glory and proclaim his wonders eternally. Alleluia!