Authors-choice: Hope & Revival

Unless we discover that we are loved not because of what we can do for others, but simply because we exist, we will never find stability and peace in life. We have to be able to trust someone unconditionally in order to escape depression, hopelessness, and anxiety. This is proven by every human tragedy in history. One of these that has always stuck in my mind is the tragic death of one of the most famous movie stars of all time: Marilyn Monroe.

She had everything the world could offer: wealth, fame, glamour, and yet she died alone, frightened, and depressed. At the age of 35, she committed suicide one night by overdosing on sleeping pills. Her maid found her on the living room floor, next to a telephone that was off the hook dangling there beside her. Later investigation revealed that before she died, she had called an acquaintance and told him that she had taken enough pills to kill herself. The acquaintance had laughed her off and hung up on her. That dangling telephone was a symbol of her whole life. She had spent her childhood in foster homes, where she was sometimes abused and often neglected. When she became a beautiful young woman, she went to Hollywood, where the publicity people latched onto her. They knew they could use her to make a fortune. She went through three marriages, trying desperately to find someone who would treat her like a person and not just a symbol. But no one would really listen to her. The phone was always dangling off the hook. This is the world we all live in, a world full of dangling telephones.

Her death reminds us that we live in a fallen world flooded with selfishness whose only law is “use your neighbor before he uses you.” And we have all been wounded by that law. And we have wounded others.

Christ came to repeal that law. He came to teach us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. And he taught us by loving us first, through his Passion.  By proving to each one of us that no matter what we do or what is done to us, he never hangs up the phone on us.