The
Face of
Mercy / Daniel Conway
‘Intense interior life,’ ‘joyful humility’ help believers to wait patiently for God
(En Espanol)
The homily preached by Pope Francis on Feb. 2, the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, reflected the fact that this feast day is also traditionally World Day for Consecrated Life. This is a day when our Church acknowledges the gift of women and men who dedicate their whole lives to living the Gospel according to the particular charisms of the different Religious Orders.
In his message for this World Day for Consecrated Life, Pope Francis says:
Brothers and sisters, waiting for God is important for us, for our faith journey. Every day the Lord visits us, speaks to us, reveals himself in unexpected ways and, at the end of life and time, he will come. He himself exhorts us to stay awake, to be vigilant, to persevere in waiting. Indeed, the worst thing that can happen to us is to let “our spirit doze off,” to let the heart fall asleep, to anesthetize the soul, to lock hope away in the dark corners of disappointment and resignation.
This spiritual principle of patiently waiting for God is especially significant for those who have lived long and productive lives and are now in the final stages of their journey of faith. Older people may be tempted to look back and regret the fact that they failed to take advantage of opportunities for spiritual growth. Or they may be impatient to complete this earthly pilgrimage and take their place with the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the saints in Heaven.
The Holy Father counsels all of us to wait for God patiently. He observes that we are given the examples of Anna and Simeon in St. Luke’s Gospel (Lk 2:22–40) as assurances that God’s promises to us will be fulfilled.
Pope Francis goes on to identify two of the obstacles that prevent all of us who try to wait patiently for God, but especially those who are vowed Religious. These are, first of all, “neglect of the interior life,” and secondly, “adapting to a worldly lifestyle.”
The Holy Father says that neglect of our spiritual life happens “when weariness prevails over amazement, when habit takes the place of enthusiasm, when we lose perseverance on the spiritual journey, when negative experiences, conflicts or seemingly delayed fruits turn us into bitter and embittered people.” He admonishes us to recover lost graces: to go back and, through an intense interior life, return to the spirit of joyful humility and silent gratitude.
A joyful heart is nourished by adoration, the pope says. It comes from what he calls “the work of the knees and the heart” and by intense prayer that struggles and intercedes, capable of reawakening our longing for God, that initial love, that amazement most women and men felt on the first day of their lives as Consecrated Religious!
A similar joy was felt on the day of every baptism—either by the newly baptized or by their parents and godparents. It is important to recover this joy now, the pope says, if we wish to progress in the life of the Spirit.
The pope’s second concern—about adopting a secular lifestyle—stems from his observation of the way the world seeks to dominate our daily lives causing excessive anxiety and impatience. Let us be careful, the Holy Father warns, “that the spirit of the world does not enter our religious communities, ecclesial life and our individual journey, otherwise we will not bear fruit.”
All baptized Christians, but especially those who have promised to live the Evangelical Counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience more intensely, need to be contemplative, to enjoy silence and meditative prayer even in the midst of active apostolates and busy lives.
Pope Francis says that “Christian life and apostolic mission need the experience of waiting.” He observes that “Matured in prayer and daily fidelity, waiting frees us from the myth of efficiency, from the obsession with performance and, above all, from the pretense of pigeonholing God, because he always comes in unpredictable ways. He always comes at times that we do not choose and in ways that we do not expect.”
Like Simeon and Anna, we need to wait for the Lord to manifest Himself to us. Then we can truly pray the “Nunc Dimittis” and allow our Heavenly Father to release us from our earthly responsibilities as He welcomes us into the Heavenly Jerusalem.
(Daniel Conway is a member of The Criterion’s editorial committee.) †