what have you done

Dear Vision Mentor of 2013,

What have you done.

Yes, you, the one still wearing facepaint from last night's scavenger hunt because you were too busy writing affirmation letters at the last minute to take a shower. The one stuffed full of Victory Waffle. The one ready to collapse in bed at 9pm, except that Vision Prom is tomorrow and you want to practice your Tunak Tunak Tun moves in the mirror some more (besides the fact that your room is currently 95 degrees and smells like Raid). Yeah, I see you.

What have you done?

Oh, friend. You've just spent four weeks getting paid to be a saint. Which is totally easy peasy.

...Take Mary for an example. Mary wasn't awesome because she worked her butt off to follow all of the rules. No, the thing that made her a saint was what was inside of her: Love. As in, the Person, in-the-flesh Love who also happened to be God.

And that happened to you this month. You became, for each other and for the students, a vessel for the in-the-flesh Love who also happens to be God. Can you grasp that? Can you understand how ridiculous and yet true that is, that God would give us not only the permission but the ability to hold Love (i.e. Himself) inside of us?

But you of all people know that to hold Love inside yourself is synonymous with pouring Love outside of yourself. If it's locked up in a safe somewhere in you, chances are 100% that it's not actually Love. No, when God gives Himself to us it's earth-shattering. It changes not only you, but everybody around you.

Maybe that's the coolest thing about what you just did. Not only did you have literally nothing else to do or be but Love, but you were doing and being love with 65+ other people in exactly the same position.

If the fact that you have the actual living Jesus inside you changes everybody around you, what do you think of the fact that you were around 65+ other people who also have the actual living Jesus inside them? Those people have also held Love, and they have also poured Love out, and that has changed you.

There's no other way it could have been.

Why am I sending this to you now, instead of on Monday or next month, when you are actually starting to process what-you-have-done? Because I want you to be confident, as you say goodbye, that it's not over. When the actual living Jesus gives Himself to you, and you hold Love inside yourself, there is nothing that can stop that.

--Unless you stop that. Unless you stop pouring Love outside of yourself. Because then what you have will no longer be Love.

As someone who has made it through a whole year since the end of my Vision experience, I can tell you with 100% certainty that opportunities to pour Love out are never going to cease to throw themselves at you. And I can tell you with 100% certainty that you have gotten so addicted to Love that you will do anything, and give anything, to get more of it.

...I'm not telling you not to be sad you have to go home. I'm not telling you not to cry tomorrow. (Oh, you will cry. Just wait till you hear the reading at Mass.) But I'm telling you that leaving is not loss. It is gain.

If what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory. (2 Corinthians 3:11)

Now go be God's.

With so much love,
Vision Mentor of 2012