God's Thoughts

Preparation for the Jubilee of Hope, with Dom Mauro-Giuseppe Lepori, OCist.

People need to rediscover hope because the situation of the world, of the Church, of our communities demands an answer, a response, which goes beyond what we have ready at hand.

Dom Mauro refers to a dialogue between the writer Giovanni Guareschi’s character Don Camillo and Christ.  Don Camillo has a very familiar relationship with the crucified Jesus of the altar of his church, to whom he often goes to speak about his problems – something we may either identify with or perhaps envy his candor.  One day, Don Camillo is venting with Jesus about the decadence of the times, which opens into a dialogue that sheds light on how to face today’s problems, including the problems of the Church and of the monastic life:

“Lord, what is this storm of insanity? Is it not that the circle is closing in on itself and the world is running toward its rapid self-destruction?”

“Don Camillo, why such pessimism? So was my sacrifice useless? Has my mission among men failed, then, because the wickedness of men is stronger than the goodness of God?”

“No, Lord. I just meant to say that today people believe only in what they see and touch. But there are essential things that are not seen or touched: love, goodness, piety, honesty, modesty, hope. And faith. Things one cannot live without. This is the self-destruction I was talking about. Man, it seems to me, is destroying all his spiritual patrimony. The only true wealth he had accumulated in thousands of centuries. One day not far off he will find himself like a caveman. The caves will be high skyscrapers full of marvelous machines, but man’s spirit will be that of the caveman […] Lord, if this is what will happen, what can we do?”

Christ smiles: “What the farmer does when the river overflows its embankments and floods the fields: one must save the seed. When the river will have gone back into its channel, the earth will reemerge and the sun will dry it out. If the farmer has saved the seed, he will be able to throw it on the ground that is even more fertile from the river mud, and the seed will bear fruit, and the stiff and golden heads of grain will give men bread, life, and hope. One must save the seed: faith. Don Camillo, you must help whoever still has faith and keep it intact. The spiritual desert spreads further every day, every day new souls dry up because they are abandoned by faith. Every day, more and more, men of many words and of no faith destroy the spiritual patrimony and the faith of others.” (Giovannino Guareschi, Don Camillo e don Chichì, in Tutto Don Camillo).

The story reminds me of something Julian of Norwich once wrote that God is infinitely calm.  In other words, he is not panicking.  Yes, is involved, moved by what his creatures do to themselves, but God has not lost hope.

Jesus smiles, as if to say: “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do” (Mk 8:33).  You are panicking, because you see nothing but destruction and despair, the loss (whether actual or potential) of everything familiar that you hold dear.

“Threatening and turbid waters are rising with violence above our peaceful, daily life, in which everything seemed to be going forward with no problems, in which we thought that living out the faith would be simple, without contradictions. … But if one lives out hope, one is granted the experience that seemed impossible: that those waters that covered everything, that maybe wiped everything out, actually helped us do what God truly wanted of us: to live from faith, to live attached to the essential, to what truly promises fruitfulness of life.”

The suffering servant testifies:
“‘The Lord GOD opens my ear that I may hear;
and I have not rebelled, have not turned back.” (Is 50:5)

How easy it is to turn away from realities that challenge us, raise questions in our hearts, to shield our faces from all that causes us pain.  The servant does not rebel, but chooses to participate in God’s work of purification, of return to essentials.  He is asking us to trust him on this, to follow him, refusing to be held back by our fears, real as they are, or our rebellion, based on the expectation - and we do expect - that life should be easier than this.

That these very circumstances could be willed by God to bring about life, this is the shocking part!  What we can do is to gather the seed of what is essential, ready to sow life for the future.  And what could be more essential than our following of Christ?

Do we believe in the saving death and resurrection of Christ our Lord?
Are we willing to allow this faith to give us hope, to shape our attitude to present circumstances?
Can we choose not to rebel, thinking as human beings do, but to follow, to participate in the way of the cross that our Lord sets before us as the way that leads to life, to say with actions louder than words, “You are the Christ.” (Mk 8:29).

Source:
https://www.ocist.org/ocist/images/pdf/02ENMFC2024.pdf

Image: Suis-Moi (Follow Me) by Sister Marie-Paul. OSB