Even In The Deserts Of Our Life, Christ Is There Series

Homily for Monday of 14th week in course

There is an undeniable tension in the Gospels between two divine realities. On the one hand, the Lord, always kind and merciful, reveals Himself through signs and wonders–personal revelations like the angels on Jacob’s ladder, raising little girls from terminal illnesses. On the other hand, the Lord consistently refuses to meet our timetable for His mercy. It seems like the past year of COVID paralysis have been particular cases of God’s clock seeming to run kind of slowly. We walk by faith, not by sight, and there are times we raise our voices to heaven and cry with the psalmist, “O Lord, how long?”

We can easily read that in the investigation into Mother Therese’s life with the Missionaries of Charity, the Vatican researchers discovered that not long after she founded the congregation, because of a vision of Christ, she lost all spiritual consolation. That means that for the last fifty years of her life, her experience of Her Savior was not an experience of emotional pleasure and spiritual light, but of aridity and darkness. That reality gives new meaning to her famous words–Jesus does not call us to be successful; He calls us to be faithful.

Why is this? Why is it that, for instance, in our devotion to Christ in communion we haven’t seen great signs and wonders? There are many Christians who never report such manifestations of divine power. This story of Jacob in Genesis helps us understand. Last week, the readings from this Jacob cycle characterized him as a young man. He was undoubtedly a liar, a thief and a fraud, and his mother was his enabler. He stole the birthright from his older brother, and in so doing broke his father’s heart. Here we see him on the run from his brother’s retribution.

But God chose Him anyway. Esau was the obedient son, the brave hunter, the hard worker. Jacob was a lazy momma’s boy. But by God’s grace, by God’s election, Jacob gradually changed into a man with such character that Jesus identified His Father as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God chooses the weak and sinful to work out his loving plan in the world. I marvel at His grace. As weak and sinful as I am, He gives me the grace to serve Him, and the awesome responsibility of serving you.

So if we experience God sometimes as an emptiness, as a vast hollow in our universe; if we do not feel spiritual consolation even after long periods of prayer, we need to recall that Original Sin left us weak and arid. When a thunderstorm breaks over the desert plain, it may be only after an hour or so of rain that the parched earth is finally saturated and the rivers begin to flow. So it is that the vast bleak desert of our own frailty and baseness may require years of divine cultivation and care before we can really sense the waters of divine love flowing in our life. But even if we never do feel it, we can still dwell in the shadow of the Almighty, and have confidence that He will deliver us from evil and always be present to us.