PHOTO: Mary van Balen For thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel: Your salvation lies in conversion and tranquility, your strength will come from complete trust. The Lord is waiting to be gracious to you, to rise and take pity on you, for the Lord is a just God. Happy are all who hope in him.
Noon reading (Sext) Isaiah 30:15,18
You will seek the Lord your God, and if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul, you shall find him. In your distress, all that I have said will overtake you, but at the end of days you will return to the Lord your God and listen to his voice. For the Lord your God is a merciful God and will not desert or destroy you or forget the covenant he made on oath with your fathers.
Afternoon reading (None) Deuteronomy 4:29-31
I have written many times about struggling to grow into “complete trust,” as mentioned in the readings from today’s Liturgy of the Hours. As I ponder these words tonight, images of Japanese people huddled around fires and searching for food and water cycle over television news programs.
How does one find trust and tranquility in the midst of trials, whether those presented by daily life or those resulting from natural disasters? How does one maintain trust in a faithful God, always present, eager to be gracious?
I chose a photo of an ocean sunset to convey a sense of tranquility, but the ocean was a source of chaos and destruction just days ago. Life is unpredictable.
“If I knew all that life would have in store for me from the start,” an old friend of my mused this evening,” I might have decided to crawl back into the womb!”
We laughed, but knew that at some level, what she said was true. Some days, life’s challenges are overwhelming. Taking them day at a time may take all the faith and strength we have. Not knowing what the future holds is grace as well as mystery.
It allows for faith, enabling one to trust, to know tranquility even in the face of extreme trial. As the events of the past few days have made clear, despite our best efforts, we are not in control of our world or our lives. In a moment, plans can fall apart. At those moments, we realize we cannot rely on our efforts alone, or even the collective efforts of others. What enables us to continue is reaching deep within and holding fast to faith in the Presence of a merciful God who will not abandon us.
Carmelite poet, Jessica Powers, wrote of this faith in her poem “The Garments of God:”
God sits on a chair of darkness in my soul.
He is God alone, supreme in His majesty.
I sit at His feet, a child in the dark beside Him;
my joy is aware of His glance and my sorrow is tempted
to rest on the thought that His face is turned from me
He is clothed in the robes of His mercy, voluminous garments –
not velvet or silk and affable to the touch,
but fabric strong for a frantic hand to clutch.
and I hold to it fast with the fingers of my will.
Here is my cry of faith, my deep avowal
to the Divinity that I am dust.
Here is the loud profession of my trust.
I need not go abroad
to the hills of speech or the hinterlands of music
for a crier to walk in my soul where all is still.
I have this potent prayer through good or ill:
here in the dark I clutch the garments of God.
To believe in Holy Presence when events cry out that God must be absent or nonexistent requires faith strengthened by prayer and practice; by “seeking God with all your heart and all your soul.”
Lent reminds us of this need to nurture our faith and relationship with the Holy One. How we observe these forty days is our choice: We may give up something or we may incorporate some practice into our lives. We may attend Mass more frequently or volunteer in some community service. What we choose should be something that strengthens our faith, that brings us closer to living life with complete trust in God-with-Us, that better enables us to hear God’s voice and to instinctively “clutch the garments of God” and hold on tight.
© 2011 Mary van Balen
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