Yearning

Wednesday, November 22, 2016

This is the second of a three-part meditation based on this passage from the Rule of Saint Benedict:

Live in fear of judgment day and have a great horror of hell.

Yearn for everlasting life with holy desire.

Day by day remind yourself that you are going to die. (RB 4:44-47)

Notice how nicely balanced the passage is. The first line speaks of hell; the second line speaks of heaven. The first line evokes feelings of fear and terror and, God forbid, condemnation and agony; the second line speaks of yearning and “holy desire” for the end of all suffering and life lived in eternal bliss. First judgment, then reward. First fear, then a peace which we can just barely sense in this life. First horror, then hope, yearning and desire for all that is good.

Do we live now with a holy desire for all that is good? Is it manifest in our thoughts, words and actions? Are we free to choose what directs us towards heaven, or is there something within us which weakens our ability to choose? This line from the Rule seems so positive and so hopeful, and yet it speaks of a state of mind which we have to struggle to attain. And it is good for us to admit that sometimes we are powerless (the first of the 12 steps), sometimes our lives are unmanageable, and sometimes we do not have the ability to operated in complete freedom. (Fr. Richard Rohr suggests that everyone would benefit from working through the 12-steps that addicts of all stripes use as a tool for their survival, that in one way or another, we are all addicts.)

But yet: this yearning filled with hope is entirely accessible to us and can to one extent or another help determine the choices we make in life. But it has to be cultivated, and not just because we fear the alternative, but because in and of itself it is so attractive and desirable that it draws us to itself despite anything that may be pulling us in the other direction.

Many of us learned that in our basic Catechism studies as children: God wants us to be happy with him in heaven. That is our ultimate destiny according to His will. And if that be the case, well can we not assume that He would put the desire and the yearning within us, and that sometimes we might be able to lift our heads up and out of the muck and mire of even the messiest life and see the clear light of a future destiny shining forth to entice us, to draw us, to seduce us and to win us over?

Can that be our hope? Once again, I remind you that the virtue of hope is a theological virtue and is something poured into us from outside of us according to the capacity we have to receive it.

Work on widening that capacity. Open it up. Accept the gift. And all will be well, as Julian of Norwich states so beautifully.

Tomorrow we will look at the third line of the passage.

God bless you!

Please not there will not be a reflection for Thursday, November 24, which is Thanksgiving Day in the United States.