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» In Light of Faith
 
Solemnity of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, June 24, 2007
by Genevieve McQuade
Drumbeats often pace the tempo of a song, and heartbeats enliven the breath of a soul. This week our scripture readings pulse a vital rhythm of full life. They urge our personal progress to ensure that our future plays out God’s plan.
The psalmist writes of unseen beginnings in the womb. Isaiah (from Mass during the Day) reflects, “The Lord called me from birth, from my mother’s womb he gave me my name.”
In Luke, John the Baptist is pledged into his Hebrew heritage. The Baptist is miraculously named John. At his initiation, his parents’ neighbors marvel, “What, then, will this child be?” John will indeed fulfill his potential as prophet to the new covenant, calling all to repentance and restoration.
We, too, are pledged into our faith by our initiation, by the divine power called down upon us. We gain a covenant with God. We are formed and called by name to live into our full identity as God’s offspring.
We are spiritually, miraculously, reborn. We are uniquely commissioned to be heralds of God’s plan. Surely, our families wondered about each of us, once babes, “What then, will this child be?”
Belonging intimately to the People of God, each of us has the vocation to fulfill God’s plan for that People and for the world by the choices we make. John the Baptist followed through; he fulfilled his role. So must we.
We, though, can be sidetracked by offbeat perceptions that can trip us up. Discordant pitches crashing about in the world can cause us to march to the beat of the wrong drummer. If we discount God’s will, we may be so out of step that our ultimate destiny is put at risk. We can exhaust our energy in futile efforts, our spiritual pace stilled.
“High and mighty thought,” we could respond, “but I’m no prophet. I’m pretty busy, and already doing my share.” This kind of belief can be too limiting, too small. God has larger plans.
We’ll hear in Isaiah that it is not enough for the tired servant, thinking he had “toiled in vain,” to restore the survivors of Israel. Although it sounds like quite a feat, God’s intention is to make his servant a light not to one but to all nations! The vigil reading similarly describes Jeremiah’s limitations transformed by God’s intentions.
God’s plan calls for a far greater work that would exceed natural abilities. Our customary reaction is to be pessimistic about what God can do through us individually. We hedge. We settle for a future deficient in what might have been.
Never underestimate the power of God! Quite simply, don’t limit God. Think big! God’s glory shines all the more when we admit our lack and count on God’s power. Who knows what God could accomplish if only we would break out of our self-imposed limitations! Just be available!
Let us examine our response to God’s gentle urgings in our hearts. Pray to move with the downbeats of the true Drummer, and even dance to the harmonies of grace. And, at the Baptist’s encouragement, may we be restored by God’s power to our original calling and commission to reverberate the Good News to our world.
What choices have you made in sync with God’s plan? What, then, are you becoming?
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How one’s perception of eternity can change
by Mary Hood Hart
June is a month of transitions. College graduates prepare for life beyond academia with entry into a profession.
Some high school graduates prepare for college; others join the armed forces or take a full-time job.
June is the most popular month for weddings, with many using this transition time to make life-long promises to lovers. Vows exchanged in a brief ceremony are meant to last for eternity.
School children slide easily into summer, shifting gears from scheduled routines to a more relaxed mode. Perhaps the only ones who don’t notice the dramatic transitions of June are the very young and the very old, those for whom the passage of time is unremarkable.
Indeed, our perceptions of time make all the difference. For those in one season of life, especially early childhood to adolescence, summer is expansive and slow. For others, summer is a quick jog through time.
In my life now, when I embark on a new month, a new season, I expect time to fly. When I was young, summer, like a housecat sleeping in the sun, stretched lazily before me. Now, the months of summer flash by in quick succession, like headlights on the highway.
The other day listening to Bob Dylan host a radio show on XM, I heard him describe time as elastic, and that description seems especially apt. According to Webster’s, elastic is defined as “capable of ready change or easy expansion or contraction; not rigid or constricted.”
When I was young, I would try to imagine what heaven is like, and the part I always struggled with was its endlessness .At that time in my life, the concept of eternity seemed boring and empty, and I wondered why anyone would find it something to be desired.
As I viewed it then, eternity involved a lot of standing around doing nothing, celestial loitering, if you will.
At that stage of my life, if I were forced to choose, I’d take earth time, with its potential to be filled with activity, remarkable in its routines and rhythms.
It wasn’t until I was in my 20s when I began to understand better the elasticity of time. And, when I finally recognized what I would call a glimpse of eternity I came to regard it as something far more desirable than our limited, chronological measures.
Indeed, while I had experienced eternity even as a child, I just hadn’t known what it was, and only later in life was I capable of some limited awareness.
I came to see that we are given a glimpse of eternity when complete immersion in an experience causes us to become forgetful, forgetful of self, forgetful of the passage of time, forgetful even of activities like eating or drinking.
My most frequent glimpses of eternity have occurred when I became involved in acreative enterprise, usually writing. Children glimpse eternity when they are playing, often imaginary play, and they become immersed to the extent of forgetfulness.
Adults have to jar them, often repeatedly, to return to reality. Contemplatives glimpse eternity when lost in meditation.
Lovers glimpse eternity when they become immersed in experiencing the other, to the point that hours in one another’s company pass like minutes, and hours apart drag on like days.
In light of these glimpses, experiencing eternity after death has become something I now anticipate.I have come to understand that the limitations we place on time will become completely released, the elastic will no longer constrict.
Like the lovers we are created to be, we will become utterly immersed in God’s love.
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The air we beathe
by Barbara Hughes
An ancient Sufi tale recounts a lesson between a young seeker and his master. Three times the young man asked his master, “How will I know when I love God with all my heart?”
Each time the young man’s question was met by silence. Finally, after a fourth time, the master, sensing the youth’s growing impatience, responded by inviting the seeker to follow him. And so the two men began walking towards the river.
When they arrived at the water’s edge, the master led the seeker into the river until the water was waist high. Then without warning, the master plunged the man’s head under the water and held it there.
When he sensed the young man could hold his breath no longer, he released his hold and the man surfaced, gasping for breath. After filling his lungs with much needed air, he turned to the master and shouted, “What’s wrong with you, are you crazy?”
To which the master replied, “When you long for God with the same intensity that you longed for air while you were under water, then you will know that you love God with all your heart.”
I heard this story more than 30 years ago. Each time I reflect on its meaning, I appreciate it more and more. It reminds me of how utterly dependent we are on God. Without God we would cease to exist, yet for the most part we live our lives as if we were in charge rather than God.
Like the young seeker, we tend to believe that loving God is about doing something for God rather than surrendering to God. When that happens, prayer and the good works we do are more about us than they are about God. And so it’s not surprising that the Kingdom of God continues to elude the world.
The spiritually immature (not to be confused with one’s age) who boast of their love for God believe they are good Christians. They are quick to notice the speck in the eyes of others while ignoring the beam in their own. Perhaps this is the reason that Christians scandalize as often as they inspire. And so of necessity, God plunges us into the waters of life so that we may come face to face with our own weakness.
This process has been referred to as the crucible or as the dark night and reminds us that we are unable to survive on our own. Its purpose is to lead us to the reality that without God we are nothing.
Like the young seeker, we can get angry with God. Or we can blame others for our plight or fight to escape the suffering imposed on us. But if we are humble and remain faith-filled, God will release us at just the right moment and we will know what it means to love God with all our heart.
Faith, like gold that is tested in fire, softens us and makes us amenable to the ways of Lord. Until we’ve experienced the night, we can only partially appreciate dawn’s early light.
Though we profess the creed with our lips and call ourselves Christians, until we have tasted death in its many forms and place our life in the palm of the one who holds us, faith exists only in the mind.
It’s a mental construct, a figment of our imagination. In order for faith to be real, faith must be lived. Real faith takes us beyond our comfort zones, plunges us into the unknown and demands that we trust God when we are neither reassured by his presence nor comforted by his embrace.
I may talk to God and talk about God but in order to be fully alive I must experience God and experiencing God is about coming face to face with my own sinfulness. It’s about allowing God to have his way with me, relinquishing my will in favor of doing his. When I trust that today’s sorrow and pain are part of tomorrow’s joy, I am beginning to enter the way of the spiritually mature.
To become spiritually mature doesn’t mean that I have all the answers. In fact more often than not, I will be left with more questions.
Becoming spiritually mature doesn’t mean that I’m perfect. It simply means that I decide to walk in faith, taking one day at a time. It means trusting that grace will see me through because I know that the ways of God are frequently at odds with human ways of assigning meaning. It means I finally understand that believing is more important than understanding.
When I am able to trust God with all my heart, then the word “why” is no longer relevant. Spiritual maturity is about consciously depending on God for the very air we breathe because we know what it means to experience God as the breath of life.
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Copyright © 2006 The Catholic Virginian Press. Articles from Catholic News Services, including Fr. Dietzen’s column, may not be reproduced here due to copyright considerations.
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