The liturgical season of waiting has passed. Advent has ended. Emmanuel – God the Son is with us! Where do we go from here?
Reflect on Anna, the prophetess—”the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived seven years with her husband after her marriage, and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple, but worshiped night and day with fasting and prayer.”
Anna spent years living and praying in the temple of Jerusalem anticipating the Christ. Her holy preparations allowed her to recognize the presence of Our Savior, the infant Christ, carried into the temple in his mother’s arms.
Luke also introduces others in his first two chapters who, like Anna, waited patiently for God to reveal Himself. We read about Mary, Zechariah, and Simeon in Luke’s Infancy Narrative.
When I reflect on periods of waiting in my life, there was hope but I also believed that I knew the best outcome at the end of that period of waiting. I was waiting, but not patiently, nor was I open to outcomes different from my desires. College acceptance, engagement ring, wedding, job offer, childbirth – I did not prepare like Anna. I was not receptive like Mary. I was not patient like Zechariah or Simeon.
Receptivity, attentiveness, and patience are not what we associate with waiting on earthly matters but these are what God asks of us as we wait for His response. He is not hiding from us but is always calling. It is our pride, our attitude of “I know best” and our sheer cluelessness to our own dysfunction wraps us in a fog and hides God’s revelation to us.
If we are to recognize Christ as Anna did, we must be attentive to people and events that God puts in our path. We must be receptive to events that might have different outcomes than we expected. Waiting requires patience and a conviction that Jesus hears us and will respond in the way He knows is best for us.
In our foyer we have a framed quote by the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, that I think expresses our fumbling towards God’s plan for us – “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”
Merton’s insights and the example of biblical figures such as Anna help us answer that question of where we go from here. As countless others have done before us, we must patiently and humbly acknowledge that God has a definitive service in mind for us. We may never fully understand our mission in this life but that makes it no less an important link in the chain God is forging between Heaven and earth.
[Readings: 1 Jn 2:12-17; Lk 2:36-40]
I am incessantly thought about this, thanks for posting.