Are you hastening?
“Are you hastening toward your heavenly home?” This is one of St. Benedict’s last questions at the end of his Holy Rule.
In the Bible, the book of Hebrews says: “By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance. He went out, not knowing where he was going.
“By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling intents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise; for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God….
“If they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had the opportunity to return. But they desired a better country, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them” (Heb. 11:8-10, 15-16).
This “hastening” Benedict speaks of, this desire, this hunger, is in the deep core of every life. It is the agony of our days. We know that this “day”…this “city”… this “country”…this man who is me …is a sign, a witness to Another Place, our heavenly homeland.
We don’t do this well. We don’t understand that our failure to find heaven here and today — on this earth — is God’s will for us.
From the beginning, we’ve been looking for paradise, and this, too, is God’s work in us. In the midst of all that burns away our hopes and dreams, God keeps alive in us this yearning for “something more.” It is an unknown land, a foreign place, with people there like us — yet not like us.
The saints, like Benedict, are there, urging us on. “Are you hastening?” he asks.
“May the intercession of the blessed Abbot Benedict commend us to you, O Lord, so that through his merits we may obtain that which we cannot accomplish by our own efforts” (a prayer for the feast of St. Benedict).
We touch God here, but not first in what we are able to accomplish ourselves. There is more. There are gifts that we cannot achieve on our own; these contain more clearly the pure revelation of the Giver.
We wake up, one day, knowing that this is the place where we are truly living our days. “What happened?” we wonder. We did not achieve this, yet something has been given to us. “Blessed are the poor inspirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
We did not know we were poor in spirit; we thought we were in some kind of hell. But then it all changed. How, we do not know. “There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole.… a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul.”
This work is not something that we have done. We would have liked to have been able to do it; but we could not. If it were one of those works that men could do, well then, the rich would live and the poor would die. But God has taken our poverty to himself, to make us rich with his kingdom.
We are learning. … But tomorrow, perhaps, life will again seem narrow and burdensome, and we will wonder “Where has the heavenly homeland gone? We’d thought that it was really ours!” This, too, is God teaching us.
Again, St. Benedict has a word: “Do not be daunted immediately by fear, and run away from the road that leads to salvation. “It is bound to be narrow at the outset. But, as we progress in this way of life and in faith, we shall run on the path of God’s commandments, and our hearts will overflow with the inexpressible delight of love.
“And finally, let us never lose hope in God’s mercy!”
[Photo: Assisi pilgrimage 2024 by ©Joanne Slugocki]
