Dominica post
Ascensionem
Evening, 7 May 2016
Church of St John the
Evangelist / Agawam
Dearly
beloved: Be prudent and watch in prayers (1 Peter 4:7).
We have entered the brief season of
Ascensiontide: these days in between Christ’s going from us and his sending of
the Holy Spirit. On Ascension Thursday, the Paschal Candle is extinguished
after the Gospel, to signify Christ’s departure. (This practice was explicitly
abrogated in the missal of Paul VI.) By this sign, however, we are meant to
take special note of Christ’s absence.
Our introit gives voice to this sense
of absence; the text is deeply appropriate—“Hear, Oh Lord, my voice by which I
have cried to you: my heart has said to you, I have sought your Face. Your Face
I have sought, Lord: do not turn your Face from me.” This is no merely polite
request: no, Ps 26 gives voice to a desperate cry. And if we are honest, such a
desperate cry is something that very easily rises from our hearts in these
times. We wonder what God might be doing: in the Church, in the world, in our
personal lives, in the lives of others. All manner of difficulty can seem to us
like an absence. “Hear my voice, Lord . . . do not turn your face from me.”
And yet the absence of Christ after
the Ascension was not like the absence of Christ on Holy Saturday; we may at
times experience it as such, but these
two absences are of an entirely different nature. Somehow, immediately
after the Ascension, the Apostles were able to go away from Bethany joyfully
and zealously.[1]
And so must we. But how? How can we have this same joyous zeal when the
question of evil—we must call it by name—still haunts our journey along this
pilgrimage?
The words of our Catechism are a help
to us: “Only Christian faith as a whole
constitutes the answer to this question . . . . There is not a single aspect of
the Christian message that is not in
part an answer to the question of evil.”[2] Here we have an important
insight. Often we search diligently for one argument, one missing element, one
key that we believe will unlock the whole of a difficult situation. Wisdom
teaches us otherwise. Rather, the entire edifice of our faith is the answer.
Instead of narrowing our attention on this or that dis-order, we do well to perceive the greater order that is at
work.
Today’s Mass deepens our discussion.
If the introit expresses the Church’s sense of spiritual absence, then the
epistle provides the remedy. “Carissimi,
be prudent and watch in prayers.” It is well that St Peter tells us to both pray
and be prudent. Oftentimes we can be unthinking with our prayer, at least in
this way.—We have faith in the importance of prayer, as well as in its power; it
is well that we should. But sometimes we speak as if prayer is the only thing
required. This is not so, as St Peter tells us. After all, prayer is like
breathing: it sustains us at every moment,
and we never give it up. This is why to vigilance in prayer we must add
prudence.
Now prudence is an intellectual
virtue that informs our choices; Aquinas calls it “right reason of things to be
done.”[3] Our spiritual life is a
journey with a very definite destination—union with God—and we have to choose
various means to arrive there. For instance, if I am trying to arrive at
charity in my speech, how will I go about this? Will I avoid this or that
situation? How will I interact with this or that person? Will I avoid talking
about this or that topic? Prudence answers these kinds of questions, and we see
therefore how essential it is for the spiritual life.
This virtue deserves a homily all its
own; nevertheless, for the present moment, St Peter’s exhortation to prudence
is helpful to us for two reasons. First, it is a helpful reminder to us about
the necessity of our acquiring this virtue, and that there is a relationship
between prayer and prudence. Second, however, by understanding the nature of
prudence in our own life, we more easily can understand God’s prudence—and this is important because Divine
Providence is nothing other than the prudence of God.[4] The divine wisdom is
constantly, steadily moving all things toward the accomplishment of its ends,
and God uses various means to bring this about. Trusting in the will of God, then, is to trust that the means he
employs are always pointed toward the good. This truth is the foundation of
our confidence: because even when the means appear obscure and painful to us,
we know to what end these means are directed—the good God himself.
This carries an important lesson,
especially for those of us who feel deeply the question of evil and disorder.—It
is not a virtue or a sign of holiness simply to be scandalized and angry about
the disorder we see around us (or within us!) It is not enough simply to
declare our indignation in the face of evil. To those of us who are tempted in
this way, God the Father speaks to us through St Catherine:
I have already told you that I have made [Christ, my
Son] a bridge for you so that all of you would be able to reach your goal. But
in spite of all this, these people do not trust me, though I want nothing other
than their sanctification. It is to this
end, with great love, that I give and permit everything. But they are
always scandalized in me, and I support and bear them with great patience
because I loved them without their ever loving me.[5]
“These things I have spoken to you, that
you may not be scandalized,” as our Gospel says today. So, to answer our
question from before: how is it that the Apostles could rejoice, despite the
absence of Christ after the Ascension?—Because they prayed and were prudent.
They had no illusions about the evil and suffering they would encounter, but
they were prudent enough themselves to know that such things were caught up in
the plan of God; that he is mighty enough to draw forth good even from what
appears hopeless.
We have a choice, then: we must choose
between a prudent hope or bitter resentment. The choice is a stark one; we must
choose wisely. Resentment is easy, but meager, poisonous fare. A mature,
prayerful hope is difficult: but it sustains the soul. We see, then, that
Christ the Master is not absent. What did we hear through St Catherine?—“I want
nothing other than their sanctification. It is to this end, with great love,
that I give and permit everything.”
St Peter well understood this, and for this reason he said, “Dearly beloved: be
prudent and watch in prayers.”
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