I have a thing for zombies! And that would still be an understatement.
I love watching zombie movies (I am Legend, Night of the Living Dead, Zombie Land, etc). Watching zombie series (The Walking Dead). Reading zombie comics (The Walking Dead). Playing zombie related games like Plant Vs. Zombies and Left For Dead. I actually bought Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 because of the zombie game.
I am fascinated by them. In fact, if the world ended, I’d prefer a zombie apocalypse more than anything.
So when Tito Melo Villaroman, one of my favorite speakers of all time, shared to us in our FTPW Trainee SHOUT that Warm Bodies was a good movie, I was intrigued to say the least. Since that time however, I never really had the chance to watch the movie until now.
If you haven’t watched the movie, go and watch it before you read this. I’m not sure how this will go but I may write some spoilers. I might. Don’t say I did not warn you.
In case you haven’t noticed, we live in a zombie world. People are so engrossed in their busy day-to-day lives that they go through life as – your guess is correct – zombies. We go from one place to the next, looking for something that we think may bring us life, money, fame, power, women, pleasure, etc – in zombie terms – brainz. Only to find out that our consumption of brainz follows the Law of Marginal Utility.
The Law of Marginal Utility states that the pleasure we derive from our consumption of a certain product (in this case: money, fame, power, glory, pleasure (drinking, drugs, and sex…etc)) is on a constant and significant decline. The cycle then becomes vicious, we consume more looking for that initial high, only to find out that it’s no longer there, so we consume it more. Hence the zombies, or in the movie’s term – turn from corpses to boneys.
The world likes to present to us that we are zombies that in fact we live only for the brainz. That without it we would die. Eventually we reach a point that it strips us of what we were meant to be – alive. We then become a legit boney.
Spoiler Alert – No seriously, this is not only a movie spoiler alert but a real life legit spoiler alert as well. In a good way!
But the movie, as it is in real life, shows us a beautiful inexplicable reality. That it is not about the brainz, that the world would like you to believe. There is something more. And that more is love.
The main character, R, yes it’s R, finds himself in the midst of his brains-eating-activity – love. He did not understand it at first, but he went through with it. Why, because he found something that did not make sense but it brought him true satisfaction – his restlessness of being a zombie for years found solace in something beyond him, something beyond his zombie-fied self. And that something was someone and that someone was love. That love eventually changed him enough to bring him back to life.
R’s insatiable hunger for brainz was made full by love. Real love. In the movies it was Julie. In real life it is Him.
The truth is, love, meets us right where we are, while we are eating brainz. When we are busy in our drunkenness, in the midst of our use of drugs, in our use of women (or men) for our sexual “needs”, in our hunger for power in the workplace, fame in our talents, our strategies of making money at the expense of others and the other countless “necessities” that we deem as brainz to keeps us alive.
Love meets us in the moment when somebody gently taps us and reminds us to go back to Church. Love meets us in the moment when somebody does a random act of kindness to us even if it was inconvenient for that person. Love meets us when at the times we are low and spends time with us. Love meets us and shakes us to wake us up from our brainz binge.
The world will tell you otherwise. It will say go back to whatever that made you “happy”. Go back to eating brainz. It will get angry and tell you you are wrong. That you need to ascribe to their standards. That you belong to them and they to you. That you are one with them. And it will be an uphill battle!
Sometimes it may seem that all is lost. But it’s not. Why, because love fights for us. Love, in fact, will journey with us until we are truly and fully converted back to who we are really meant to be! Alive! Love has triumphed and it will always triumph! So don’t be afraid to take the plunge, we are meant to live for so much more than brainz, we are meant to live for, in, and with love! We are meant to live! We are meant to love!
So for those who are actually already living, don’t be afraid to journey with us who are still trying to find love. Meet us where we are. Journey with us. Enflesh the Love that is Him, and incarnate what is true. Bring us back to life.
For those of us who have found love but is still leagues away from being truly alive, don’t worry. Like R, our journey with love will be an instrument for change in others like us. Our journey with love will become an invitation for others to journey with love as well. Our yes to the invitation to love becomes an act of witnessing. To be and bring love wherever we are.
May the lives of Saints Peter and Paul inspire us to say yes to love and be fully consumed by it. May their conversion to being fully alive from the death of Peter’s denial and Paul’s persecution give us hope that nothing and no one is truly far enough from love that they are lost forever. May the Sacred Heart of Jesus have mercy on us. Amen.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
