Numb

Do you know that moment when your are sitting a certain way and you feel one of your legs fall asleep? The feeling in your leg just slowly slips away, almost to the point of you not noticing. And you sit for a while, then you stand up and realize your leg is asleep. You stand for a bit, but start walking and it still feels weird (plus you look really awkward, looking like a baby giraffe) but you push through and keep walking. Then the feeling returns, and it feels like hot pins pricking your leg, and sometimes it really hurts, but you push through the pain and then you're able to really feel your leg again. It feels right, you can walk, everything is just like it's supposed to be.
I like to use this example when talking to retreatants at the end of their retreat. Because most students leave a retreat feeling on fire and really connected to their faith (hopefully). That "retreat high" isn't a high. It's an anti-depressant. It's a reawakening. It's that moment where you begin to really feel those nerves again. And most of the time it involves pain, because of the wages of sin and the persecution from our society. So, to avoid the pain and suffering of the world, we crawl back to that wonderful moment before we felt those nerves. Back to that time when we were numb.
This is what our culture calls "reality." The truth is that Jesus is the reality. His love is the reality. Those retreats are not a temporary distraction or recreational. They are glimpses of the Kingdom of God. As a youth minister, I feel like I'm always asking myself how I can prepare my kids to live their faith in the "real world". But that "real world" is not reality, it's a false reality. It is a twisted interpretation of what God created. The sad thing is that there are incredible people everywhere who have met Christ, who have a relationship with Him, but are still numb and accepting of that false reality. It feels like its real, but we are just distracted from what is truth. And in moments like Mass and retreats, where you get to literally retreat from society and our culture, you begin to actually feel what is truth. But as soon as it's over, we're forced back into the world and pumped full of whatever it is that numbs us (sex, drugs, and rock & roll, am I right?).
The Evil One has conscripted our culture to make us believe, that we should just get back into what is comfortable. Cardinal DiNardo, the archbishop of Galveston-Houston, once said that you can never encounter Christ without getting a job to do. Christ challenges us constantly to rise above this false reality into something better. The problem is that we are told we cannot change the world. We are told that those hot pins of pain in our leg that has fallen asleep will never stop and that it is ultimately not worth it. I know I believed it multiple times throughout my life. But that, like everything else spoken by Satan, is a lie. We believe that we have to see instant results for something to be successful, but that is not what Christ tells us.
"Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them? I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily. But when the Son of Man comes will he find faith on earth?" -Luke 18:7-8

The truth is that with perseverance, prayer, and action, God can change the world through us. I can tell you from personal experience that nothing will change instantly. As a matter of fact, you might never see anything change, but it's not for our gratification. It is for the glory of God. We experience the pain and suffering of the world, only because that is the price of our sin. Those fiery pin needles that we feel after our leg has fallen asleep, only remind us that we are alive. And because of the Cross, we can cling to the hope of the Kingdom of God.