The 20 year old Hollywood actress Lindsay Lohan crashed her car after hopping a curb on Sunset Boulevard and then proceeded to flee the accident site and was found at a nearby apartment complex. She was arrested for suspicion of driving under the influence and later was confirmed to have been taking cocaine. Before all this was over she was once more seen frolicking around Hollywood with eager photographers ready to capture her later on in the evening passed out once more in the seat of a friend’s car. Just one month shy of her 21st birthday Lindsay who had been in rehab earlier this year will be resubmitted. It was stressed by her publicist that we need to respect her vulnerability as well as those of the other patients by keeping our distance stating further by a family friend that “She has a lot of issues and family issues. There is an incredible amount of pressure on this 20-year-old.” However it has been well noted by other friends that even though going from movie to movie is very taxing in the end she “really loves the business.” Lindsay got her first break in the movie business at age 11 while doing the Disney remake of the popular film “The Parent Trap” and has been in 10 films and currently can be seen in “Georgia Rule.” In the past 20 years she has admitted to trying to commit suicide on two different occasions and was seen drinking while in rehab earlier this year stating later that rehab is fun and now she understands why so many celebrities go.
While it is hard to find sympathy at times for a person the seems on the surface to be marketing herself with an unending amount of turmoil showing little or no remorse for her actions, something the media has pointed out in the behavior of other celebrities such as Paris Hilton, I cannot help but find underneath a problem that plagues so many in our culture today. Life for all of us can be unpredictable and from my experience it seems the majority of our time is spent trying desperately to curb the madness in our lives finding a false control in wealth, power, relationships or even our physical appearance. With what seems to many an inexhaustible amount of financial resources our attention is drawn often to those who live life in such extreme excess much like Lindsay. Even though most of us don’t have the ability or the resources to live our lives to such a degree it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to relate in some way to what they are going through and often finding some solace that since they are going through such things then it must be natural and normal for many of us to do so as well. It’s almost as if the children of Hollywood today have no sense of shame or remorse for anything, mirroring the fact I think many in society today seems to have little remorse for their behavior. We just need to look at extreme individuals such as Whitney Houston, Brittney Spears, Paula Abdul…the list is endless and yet no one really says anything we all just sit back and laugh at them and in our silence we encourage many of there choices. What saddens me the most is that so many try to imitate these individuals allowing ourselves to live out our lives as destructively as those we have come to admire, forgetting the dignity in which we all were created in.
I’m reminded of Katharine Drexel, a Philadelphia woman who was born in the mid 19th century to a well known banker and philanthropist. What made Katharine stand out in history was her deep concern for the Native American and those in the Afro-American community. In her youth her parents instilled a deep awareness that their great fortune was simply a loan God granted them and they have a great responsibility to share this with others. Becoming aware of the poor in the native Indian community on a journey out West helped the young girl to realize the importance of helping victims of social injustice. Another powerful impact on Katharine was witnessing and tending to her grandmother in the last years of her life. This helped the young Katharine to realize clearly that money offered no true security or personal prosperity. Katharine brought a great awareness for those living in poverty in our community100 years before such concern became public interest in the United States. While traveling to Rome to seek out missionaries to staff some of the missions she was starting Pope Leo XIII surprised her by suggesting she become a missionary herself. On February 12, 1891 she professed her first vows and later founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament dedicating her life to share the message of the Gospel with those in the American Indian and Afro-American community. Her example is that of total self-giving, relinquishing freely all the world believes to be success and power and in-turn donated her life and her family fortune to serving those who are in need and to better understand what authentic love actually means. Throughout her life she opened, staffed and supported nearly 60 schools and missions and Katharine’s greatest achievement came in 1925 when she opened the Xavier University of Louisiana, the only predominantly Afro-American Catholic institution of higher learning in the United States.
St. Katharine was beatified November 20th, 1980 and continues to set an example for all who feel helpless and overwhelmed by the tribulations of life showing us what it means to live your life with passion and to the fullest. She was a great witness to the power of the Spirit and what God can do with you if you are willing to lay down your life and allow the Spirit to use you as an instrument. This action allows all of us to actively participate in the mystery of the Trinity, this eternal exchange of love shared between Father and Son. All love is like that of a bride-groom and bride and through our relationships we are given a foretaste of the love we will share with this one Triune God. This is the only thing that is everlasting. This love, the selfless act of giving yourself to all those in your life is what it means to love as God loves. Lindsay, like so many people live their lives focusing their attention on things of this world to bring meaning to their lives. Comeliness, wealth, social standing/power cannot fill the void in your life. Allowing our hearts to be focused on pride and selfishness will only further drive us away from the one who is Love.
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