Powerball
this past Wednesday was worth $435 million.
I don’t usually buy lottery tickets, but when it gets that high, sometimes
I do. This week I did - I bargained with the Lord – said God, if I win I’ll
spend the rest of my days figuring out how to give it all away to do the most
good. Apparently, He didn’t believe
me. The winning ticket was bought by
some lucky soul in Indiana. So I go to
work.
Now
some permanent deacons have jobs in ministry, working for a paycheck from the
Church. Some are retired and can devote
much of their time to their ministry.
And some go to work in a secular day job in order to put food on the
table and a roof over their families’ heads.
I’m
in that last group - those permanent deacons whose ministry is largely confined
to doing what I can on weekends, trying to balance diaconal ministry with my
first ministry, that of husband and father, and balancing it all with the
demands of a day job.
I
was blessed to find a new day job last year, leaving my last employer for a number
of reasons – some disagreements, some discomfort with the products the company made
(mostly used in military applications),
better opportunity, more challenge, better pay. In my first year all of the above have come
to pass – especially the challenge. The
new job has a long commute and I’ve wound up working a large number of hours,
sacrificing time I would have spent with my wife and family, even time in
prayer and at daily Mass, time I could have spent in my diaconal ministry.
So
these readings, especially this Gospel, raise for me the important question –
why? While preparing for her women’s
bible study last Sunday, my wife turned to me with that question – why? Why do
you do it? Is it for the challenge, like
you’re fond of saying, or is it really for the money, for a bonus? Ouch, I said to myself. Am I serving God, or mammon? Ouch.
But
but but, I rationalized - we just put three kids through college. We haven’t saved enough for retirement. Still have to pay the mortgage – wouldn’t it
be nice to someday have the house paid for.
And we like to be generous with our money. Dot dot dot.
Truth
be told, her question continues to be on my mind and heart, as I contemplate,
as I examine, my motives – what is driving my behavior? Whom, or what, am I really worshipping?
And
why am I so worried? Until she asked
that question, I’d have said I have few money worries. But after some thought, I have to admit maybe
it’s worry about the future that has me running faster and faster on the wheel.
Now
if your mind has wandered off thinking about your own worries, and who doesn’t
have them, please come back. Eyes up
here.
My
point is this – we all have worries. Even
the deacon and priest. And not just money. Kids – what mom won’t admit she worries about
her kids? Even grown up and gone from
our house, we still worry about our kids, huh?
Health concerns. The economy. Staying
employed. This dark, increasingly secular culture. You name it, there’s no shortage of things to
worry about.
But
what’s really accomplished by worry? If
we stop to think about that, we’d realize two things – first, what a very wise
parishioner told my wife awhile back. “Worry,”
she said, “is wasted prayer.” Worry is wasted prayer. And it is.
If
we took the time spent worrying and devoted it to prayer instead, in giving
over our concerns to the Lord, we would not only enlist His help (not that He
doesn’t already know our needs – He tells us today very clearly that He does!),
but we’d also be a lot less stressed. We
would, in a word, abandon ourselves into His hands, into His arms. And that
would bring us the peace that we so desire.
Second,
we’d realize that worry, part of the human condition of suffering that it is,
is really a lack of trust. A lack of
faith. We don’t trust enough in a loving
God, a God who even if life isn’t turning out exactly how we want, always walks
with us, cares for us. And even if bad
things befall us or the people we love, we have His promise that if we’re
faithful to Him, in the end it will turn out, well, heavenly.
So
we don’t trust enough, huh? Our Blessed
Lord is saying quite clearly in this Gospel, I think, that we need to trust His
Father.
What
does this kind of trust look like, exactly?
I came upon a rather vivid image of this kind of trust this week reading
this book a parishioner gave me. In what
turned out to be the last year of his life, Henri Nouwen made a sabbatical and wrote
a daily journal which is now this book, and reading a few pages I was directed
to a passage from another of his books.
By
way of background, Nouwen was in Europe and became fast friends with a troupe
of trapeze artists called the Flying Rodleighs, and was enamored with their
high wire theatrics. Flying through the
air, a flyer and a catcher. The flyer
who would let go of the swing, tumble through the air, and be grabbed out of
the air by the catcher. Nouwen wrote:
"When
the circus came to Freiburg two years ago, friends invited me and my father to see
the show. I’ll never forget how enraptured I became when I first saw the
Rodleighs move through the air, flying and catching as elegant dancers.
"One
day, I was sitting with the leader of the troupe, talking about flying. He
said, 'As a flyer, I must have complete trust in my catcher. The public might
think that I’m the great star of the trapeze, but the real star is Joe, my
catcher. He has to be there for me with split-second precision and grab me out
of the air as I come to him in the long jump.' 'How does it work?' I asked.
'The secret,' Rodleigh said, 'is that the flyer does nothing and the catcher
does everything. When I fly to Joe, I have simply to stretch out my arms and
hands and wait for him to catch me and pull me to safety.'
" 'You
do nothing!' I said, surprised. 'Nothing,' Rodleigh repeated. 'The worst thing
the flyer can do is to try to catch the catcher. I’m not supposed to catch Joe.
It's Joe's task to catch me. If I grabbed Joe's wrists, I might break them, or
he might break mine, and that would be the end for both of us. A flyer must
fly, and a catcher must catch, and the flyer must trust, with outstretched
arms, that his catcher will be there for him.'
"When
Rodleigh said this with so much conviction, the words of Jesus flashed through
my mind: 'Father into your hands I commend my Spirit.' ... 'Don't be afraid.
Remember that you are the beloved child of God. He will be there when you make
your long jump. Don't try to grab him; he’ll grab you. Just stretch out your
arms and hands and trust, trust, trust.' "
What
a beautiful and powerful image of the trust we need to have in God’s love for
us. To let go of the bar, tumble through
the air of our lives, and let Him catch us.
With complete abandonment. With
complete hope. With complete trust. That’s the remedy for worry, isn’t it? Complete trust.
Let
me close with this beautiful prayer I read in the same book, a prayer Henri
Nouwen prayed every morning, a prayer by Charles de Foucauld:
Father,
I abandon myself into your hands;
do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you:
I am ready for all, I accept all.
Let only your will be done in me,
and in all your creatures -
I wish no more than this, O Lord.
Into your hands I commend my soul:
I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands without reserve,
and with boundless confidence,
for you are my Father. Amen.
