How Long We Wait

Ready or not, Lent is upon us!  We can think of Lent as a teacher, a school that we faithfully attend for 40 days in the hope that we will be changed – that we will be altered in some way by what we are taught.  One lesson Lent teaches is the lesson of waiting.

My students and I spent the last six months studying some of the treasures of the Hebrew Bible, leaving me with more appreciation than ever for the amount of time the people of Israel waited patiently for their God to fulfill his promises.  Yes, there were questions, there was confusion, there were times when things looked awfully bleak and murky.  But as a people, they refused to give up on their God who, they believed, would keep every promise, win every battle, and triumph over every evil:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
and by night, but find no rest.

Yet, you are holy,
enthroned on the praises of Israel.
In you our ancestors trusted;
they trusted, and you delivered them.
To you they cried, and were saved;
in you they trusted, and were not put to shame.

This is one of Lent’s lessons.  And of course, it is one of the lessons of the Cross.  God unfailingly keeps his promises.  But sometimes, how long we wait!

The poem “How Long We Wait” by Thomas Merton was given to me years ago by someone who wanted to see me through a time in my life when things seemed upside down and backward.  I’ve treasured it ever since.  The movement and imagery of Merton’s poem helped me understand the beauty of waiting – the perennial questions, posed a million ways, and the prayerful expectations of human longing.  It captures the faith of the Israelites, the life-altering lessons of patient waiting, the joyful expectation of our Lenten longing – we who wait for the Bridegroom to laugh, when the dark is done.

A Prayer

Grant me to recognize in other men, Lord God, the radiance of your own face.

-- Teilhard de Chardin

The Other Side of the Coin

Sacrificing, re-prioritizing, putting others first – that’s one thing.  But what about when others sacrifice for you?  Accepting the sacrifice of others may be just as great a feat, if not greater, than making a sacrifice yourself.  Because when someone sacrifices on your behalf, they are re-organizing their own priorities, shifting their own perspective – they are naming you as the “something else”, the something greater than themselves.  And as self-centered as we all can be, there is still something deep down inside each one of us that resists the possibility that we could actually be worth it.

Think about the last time someone sacrificed for you in a significant way.  Did you recognize what was happening – the shift that was taking place within that person – for you?  Did you allow this to happen?  Did you accept the gift?  Were you a part of that persons’ transformation, a part of that person’s emergence from the cocoon of themselves?

Now let’s think about the sacrifice of the Cross.  From the Cross, Jesus has named you as the “something else”, the something greater.  You are the pearl of great price, worth selling all he had.  This was his desire, his choice:  “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down” (Jn. 10:18). 

This is the other side of the coin of sacrifice.  From within the shelter of our own cocoons, we have the dangerous ability to empty the Cross of its power.  We have the power to nullify its grace.  Accepting the love, the grace, the power of this great sacrifice is an enormous spiritual feat.  We can only do it from the foot of the Cross, with the recognition that we need him, and that he wouldn’t have it any other way.