Anxiety, like all tensions, eats at us at various levels. More superficially, we worry about many things. Deep down though we are anxious in a way that colors almost everything we do. We nurse the secret belief that if we have the right combination of these in our lives, we will have the substance we need to feel secure and non-anxious. But experience soon teaches us that these things, though good in themselves, are not our cure. We are forever trying to give ourselves wholeness, but we cannot. We cannot self-justify. We cannot make ourselves immortal. We cannot write our own names into heaven. Only love casts out anxiety and, indeed, only a certain kind of love can give us substance. Only God’s love can write our names into heaven. What’s the algebra here? Some years ago, I went on a weeklong retreat directed by Fr. Robert Michel, a French-Canadian, Oblate missionary. He began the retreat with these words: “I want to make this a very simple retreat for you. I want to teach you how to pray in a particular way. I want to teach you how to pray so that in your prayer, perhaps not this week, perhaps not even this year, but sometime, you will open yourself so that in your deepest self you will hear God say to you: ‘I love you!’ Because before you hear this inside you, nothing will be enough for you. You’ll be searching for this and for that, running here and running there, trying every kind of thing, but nothing will ever be quite right. After you hear this from God, you will have substance; you will have found the thing you’ve been looking for so long. Only after you have heard these words will you finally be free of your anxiety. In the Gospel of John, Jesus exhibits very little humanity. Near the end of the Gospel, we have that poignant, post-resurrection meeting between Jesus and Mary of Magdala. Mary, carrying spices to embalm his dead body, goes searching for Jesus on Easter Sunday morning. She meets him but doesn’t recognize him. Supposing him to be the gardener, she asks him where she might find the body of the dead Jesus. Jesus replies by repeating the question with which he opened the Gospel. Then, before she can answer, he gives the deepest answer to that question: He pronounces her name in love: “Mary”. In that very particularized affirmation of love, he writes her name into heaven. He gives her substance, and he cures her of her anxiety.