The following excerpt was written by one of our women’s program spiritual directors, Annie Karasinski as an email shared to the congregation of St. Andrew’s Church:
On Division Avenue, across the street from the Cathedral, is Guiding Light, a program dedicated to the recovery and restoration of people suffering from addiction. Many people I love, including my oldest daughter, have struggled with addiction to alcohol and drugs, and from experience, I know that recovery depends on similar patience.
Guiding Light’s first value is “waking up”, and literally, this means that the participants, men and women, must be up, with their beds made, by 6:00 am. But there is a deeper meaning to “waking up,” something we are all called to do.
Whether we know it or not, admit it or not, we all suffer from some form of addiction. As humans, we are conditioned to sleepwalk through life, distracted by anything and everything that fills our longing, and these things become the attachments to which we are addicted: screens, success, control, food, blame, fear, attention. The list is endless, and sadly, when we are skidding toward the bottom, we turn our addictions into a moral failing, asking the question: what’s wrong with me? This understandable but poor question steals both our agency and our awareness of God’s presence. A better question is: how do I wake up to remember that I am beloved of God?
In Addiction & Grace, Gerald May writes, “Our addictions fill up the spaces within us, spaces where grace might flow.” In my life, I know that I have been addicted to my failures as a daughter, a wife, and mother, and the frequent sorrow that this attachment brings fills the space of my deepest longing, and I become distracted by the sticky nagging of my shortcomings and feel miles away from my belovedness.
My mindless sleepwalking urges me to cling to the false image of being a bad mother, that I am to blame for my daughter’s addiction. But waking up allows me the profound grace to know that I don’t have to fix her; all I have to do is love her. Gerald May writes that our false selves “fill the spacious mystery of who we really are” and that “In the true image of God, we ourselves are incomprehensible.”
Echoing St. Augustine’s words, the Catholic Catechism says: “the desire for God is written in the human heart.” Waking up shifts our attention from our attachments to our necessary participation in grace. This is our saying “yes” to God. As our Blessed Mother said yes, as our faithful servants—Popes, Priests, Religious Sisters, Deacons, and the entire Communion of Saints before us—have said yes, we are called to wake up to our transformed selves, our true identity resting in God.
Waking up is an ongoing part of our spiritual journey. It is simple but not easy. It asks us to cooperate with God by being honest with ourselves and to stand naked in our fear, but to also claim the dignity that comes with being beloved sons and daughters of God. Waking up is mystery, but it is also effort. It is a daily practice of pulling out the weeds, the things that limit our growth and closeness to God, while still surrendering to the understanding that nothing can fill our longing for God other than God.
As a community, we walk this path together and help one another wake up. We remind each other that grace is always at work, even when we cannot yet feel it. Together, we turn toward God, who never stops calling us to freedom.
We are born beloved.
My heart is ready, O God, my heart is ready.
I will sing. I will sing your praise. Awake my soul!