XXIX Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
17 October 2010
Luke 18:1-8
I was glad to find that today's Scripture readings highlight the three words of a motto to which I am devoted: prayer, patience, perseverance. I first encountered this three-word exhortation in the spiritual diary my mother kept in her final years -- in fact, they are the last three words she wrote in that diary. We have them in today's readings. There is the perseverance of Moses, holding his arms up, but not alone, not without help. St. Paul preaches patience in teaching to his disciple, the bishop Timothy, helping him with encouragement. In the Gospel, Jesus tells us to pray persistently, to persevere in prayer without losing heart.
In its Latin roots, the word "patience" is closely allied to suffering. Suffering does not necessarily refer to pain or anguish. It can mean to be long-suffering, to endure bravely, to hold on with perseverance. Wordsworth's line about "the soothing thoughts that spring/From human suffering," which has been ignorantly mocked, does not refer to taking comfort in people being tortured, but to a faith in humanity from examples of human endurance and fortitude. It is almost word-play when St. Benedict tells his monks to "by patience share in the sufferings of Christ" -- here, by "patience" Benedict means putting up with each other in community without even internal complaints.
There is one possible question about "prayer, patience, perseverance" that I will dwell on in the rest of my time today, the question whether this is not a call to a passivity that does nothing, except to hang around bearing with unlived life. Someone is at prayer and another person complains: "praying is all very well, but why don't you do something?" And, behind the critic's back, a mountain begins to move slowly. Prayer does move mountains: mountains of sin, mountains of ignorance and self-absorption which had blocked our view of and access to God and his love. The line is not original with me, but I concur with it: "Don't just do something; stand there."
To stand there, to take a stand, has the qualities of listening, seeing, being open to receive and accept God's initiatives (capax Dei), to take in and even become one with God's life. It is a state capable of awe, wonder, faith, and love. It is beyond active and passive, with possibilities that cannot be achieved if one is always having to "do something," to get somewhere or something, ever under pressure, never at rest.
Yet the prayer, patience, and perseverance I am extolling is not confined to a state of still quietude. It does not exclude action, so long as activity is in the right time and place, in harmony at the right pace. Even in much activity, engaged with the needs and concerns of those around us, the core of one's being, the heart and soul, must remain steady, patient and persevering, in fidelity to God and devoted to whatever he wills for us among those we live with. It is not a stoic indifference, for we must care as deeply as God does for all he made and loves; it is not an Eastern negation or rejection of the mortal and material world of God's good creation. Taking up all that is within and around us, we offer all to God: may all your creatures bless you; let all that breathes bless the Lord. As noted about the readings, this is not a solitary condition; rather we are to help and encourage one another and be willing and able to accept help.
The psalms exhort us to "strive manfully [that is, valiantly] and let your heart take courage, you who wait on the Lord." Do not, as Jesus said, ever lose heart. This calls for alertness, vigilance, waiting in the expectant Advent mood, prepared to be responsively open to God and each other. If we can maintain prayer, patience, and perseverance in steadfastness and fidelity, can have the courage, the strength of heart, to remain faithful, to keep the faith as we await the Lord to receive and be received by him in love, then we may give a heartfelt and true response of "yes" to the most haunting question Jesus ever asked: "But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"
