By Ryan LeBlanc

Maybe all the temptations in the world boil down to a panicked urge to escape the real present moment that we are actually experiencing.

That’s certainly what’s happening when I have the urge to take out my phone and scroll every time I feel even a little bored or awkward. In my least virtuous moments, I have had my own young children clambering for my attention to share something wondrous, only for me to ignore them in favour of anything stupid on the Internet. What can answer for our willing absence from our own lives?

I had been thinking about presence, when the Easter Gospels spoke to me about Christ being present:

– Christ present in the room when we thought we had locked everything out (John 20:19-23).

– Christ present on the walk when we thought we were putting distance between us and him (Luke 24: 13-35).

– Christ present to us when we wept over not being able to find him (John 20: 11-18).

– Christ gently and patiently present to us, inviting us to love him as many times as we denied him (John 21: 15-19).

– Christ promising to be always present to us (Matthew 28: 16-20)  as his glorified body is taken from our sight.

Being present is kind of trendy right now. I notice that trends can be both shallow exploitations and deeply felt needs. In our time and place, we need to rediscover how to be present. But the reality of what that means in the lived moment is something I have to discover for the first time, each time it happens, and with each person I encounter.

Some things we get better at by doing the same thing over and over. Being present always brings a brand new moment, unlike any other we have ever lived. Being present means living life as a newborn, all the time.

I have been shaped by everything that has happened in my life. I have yet to be shaped by what will come. And whatever I am in this moment is a mystery even to myself.

And what if you and I become present to each other?

If we are going to share our presence heart-to-heart, then the thoughts, feelings and desires in of the heart make a single personal encounter a stupendously unique and unrepeatable event.  Indeed, if each of us have “galaxies within us which Jesus cannot wait to show us” then when I truly reveal my inner self to you and receive your self-revelation with faith, something akin to galaxies colliding is happening.

No wonder our hesitation to enter into encounter, our discomfort in real vulnerability. No wonder we build and maintain walls between us. No wonder it takes so much energy to be present to another person!

But does it always? If we still our chattering minds and fears of intimacy, isn’t it true that simple and innocent persons invite us into true presence with disarming ease? Doesn’t a baby falling asleep in our arms draw our hearts into trust and rest the way an ocean draws a river to flow into it?

Maybe God invites us into heaven and into prayer in the same way.

God is always present to us – but being present to God takes practice.

While it is difficult to be fully present to myself and others, my encounter with Jesus is prayer gently and effectively teaches me the healing power of loving, compassionate present.

Being present takes willingness – a willingness to experience our own and others’ suffering, uncertainty, vulnerability, and even glory. We need to be willing to show up, willing to experience disappointment, willing to be exactly who we are. Like Jesus is.

Someone attending a birth – or a death – cannot be anything but fully present to that moment. Really, that is the only thing we can be present to: receiving something new coming into the world, and releasing something whose time to pass on has come. A death of a dream in my life, the birth of a possibility in yours.

In an encounter with the other, we cannot be anything more than present. We will stumble forward, clumsy at first, along a journey of mutual discovery. Let’s not avoid clumsy stumbling!

With distraction and with self-obsession, we can be a great deal less than present. Bodies in the same room, but minds and spirits far away from each other.

What I don’t want, yet I experience anyway, is to absent myself from my own life and relationships.

I need that loving gaze of Christ – often shining through the human faces of those who love me – to draw me in and away from aimless searching for happiness in some other time and place than I’m in. While my heart hesitates to trust in him, the reality is that I learn how to honor and love the person I’m with from the way Jesus sees me.

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Ryan LeBlanc is a Teacher Chaplain at E.D. Feehan Catholic High School in Saskatoon and a parishioner at the Cathedral of the Holy Family.