A more personal post today.
Ash Wednesday is tomorrow. But I woke up today with a Lenten melancholy after a night of worried sleep. In the chapel during morning prayer a surge of sadness surprised me, and there I was fighting back tears while we recited the Psalms. What was going on? I knew what was going on. Was it homesickness? No, it was not that; I do not want to go back to the United States right now. (Calm down, fellow Yanks. And don’t worry, Boston—you’ll always be Number One.) No, it is something else, not homesickness. I’ll invent a word for it: timesickness. What is this? Timesickness is wishing you could return to a time other than the present and do then what you are doing now. Or it is wishing the person you were at that time could be willing and doing what the person you are now wills and does. Finally, and worst of all, it can be the old person and the old person’s ways intruding on the present and undermining the new person who is striving to be and become. I feel a little bit of each of these.
Why do I feel timesick today? I am forty-one years old. I wish it had not taken me so long to get to this point in my life where I could embrace Jesus Christ and the Gospel and have a journey like this. I think of my friends who took the leap of faith when they were much, much younger and went abroad for language and cultural immersion, diving in from the deep end. Today I stand in awe of them for their courage, their faith, and their love … and their adventurous spirit. I think of the Confessions of St. Augustine and his ecstatic yet regretful exclamation: “Late have I loved you, O Beauty, ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you.” I am timesick for the friends I never made. I am timesick for the love I never gave or received, or which I recognized too late.
There is something else, too, in this sadness, another dawning of awareness. It is not only a mourning for years spent not living the Gospel with abandon or embracing the extraordinary encounters it brings. It is also a lament for a lack of consciousness, a consciousness that prepares us for living “the joy of the Gospel,” to borrow Pope Francis’ phrase. This is a consciousness that is attuned to the joy and simplicity of everyday life, what some Latina mujerista theologians call la vida cotidiana. Today I think God and my guardian angels are trying to tell me not to underestimate the value of the good things in life, en la vida cotidiana, that I have left behind, or never had, to follow Jesus. Like Augustine, I am late to recognize the ultimate goodness of all created things in God, their ultimate beauty by virtue of the imprint of God’s holy name in them; and, in the breath of every living thing, an echo of the whisper of the Spirit who says, “Beloved.” But as I sit in this bus to Tarata, with Laguna Angostura, the Andes, and the Bolivian sky in my eye, I know I am also unlike Augustine. For I am even later in loving the beauty of things in themselves, or of people in themselves. How I have failed to appreciate the loveliness of life in itself, before or without the light of grace. Was the light of nature not enough for me? Which brings me back to the timesickness and that tugging, hollow feeling. How immature my renunciations for Christ seem today. It is one thing to give up things you don’t know, you don’t want, you don’t love. It is another to give up things you know, things you want, things you love. Doing the former is doing nothing at all. Doing the latter is everything, everything.
This brings me to today’s Gospel reading and my lectio, which hits home: “Peter began to say to Jesus, ‘We have given up everything and followed you.’ ” I never noticed that word, began, before. Peter began to say. Dear God, by your grace and mercy I think I am beginning to be able to say, “We have given up everything,” and really mean it, because now I know better the value of what I am leaving or have left. I value these things because God has put a love in my heart for these beloved ordinary things, these beloved ordinary people. I am beginning to say, “I have given up everything,” and it hurts. I don’t need to make a resolution to give up particular things this Lent. I feel a consciousness rising of everyone and everything I love. That’s enough to put me into a spirit of penitence—penitence for indifference, penitence for inattention, penitence for ignorance. To these dear ones and dear things I say, I am sorry I did not acknowledge you, I am sorry I did not appreciate you, I am sorry I did not attend to you. I missed the moment—I missed you—and in God’s name I am sorry, because now I have to go, and I do not have the right to carry you with me.
As for Peter, I wish to say to him, I have empathy for you. Often I have dismissed his declaration as pride: See, we did what the rich young man could not do. But I have a different impression of him now, today. Suppose Peter says what he says not to boast, but to express surprise and sorrow: surprise at discovering the real costliness of this grace, and sorrow because it hurts. He really is losing everything. Is Peter sad, is he longing, is he afraid? Well, I am trying to say what he is saying to Jesus, and this is what I feel, all of it.
Jesus’ response is unbelievable, yet so real and merciful. Peter will now receive everything he has given up and many times over, in joy and pain, in this life and eternal life. There is more behind these lines of Scripture. Up to now you have not been immersed in the love of God. So what. You are now. Give up. Live in this love.
No one gets to do over the past. The do-over is today. Dear God, thank you for bringing me this deeper consciousness, though it is bittersweet. Don’t let the old person overtake the new person you are creating. Keep fear and prolonged sadness away. Ease my timesickness and give me the courage and good cheer to do over yesterday with today, to rise to whatever arises in my life. Amen.
Postscript: I misunderstood what we were going to be doing today in Tarata. I thought we were going to have a k’oa for the celebration of ch’alla. Rather we visited the Franciscan fraternity that resides there and runs a retreat house. This morning we had a spiritual conference given by an Italian friar in residence. At midday we had a prayer service led by the student friars with a reflection on mercy, an examination of conscience, a call to repentance, and a renewal of our baptismal vows through a renunciation of old ways. Fitting, very fitting, but I confess my wandering mind was elsewhere. But I was brought back to attention, and to tears, by the solidarity of these brothers with one another, and by their convivencia. They are sharing life together, not only in the realm of grace, but also in the everyday, la vida cotidiana.
I finish this day’s entry under the shade of palm trees in the cloister garden at Tarata. I have wandered the ample grounds of this retreat house. I have seen a peacock; I have prayed at a wishing well; I was tempted to pluck the oranges and peaches from the trees. Lord, have mercy. Saint Augustine, pray with us.
Ash Wednesday is tomorrow. But I woke up today with a Lenten melancholy after a night of worried sleep. In the chapel during morning prayer a surge of sadness surprised me, and there I was fighting back tears while we recited the Psalms. What was going on? I knew what was going on. Was it homesickness? No, it was not that; I do not want to go back to the United States right now. (Calm down, fellow Yanks. And don’t worry, Boston—you’ll always be Number One.) No, it is something else, not homesickness. I’ll invent a word for it: timesickness. What is this? Timesickness is wishing you could return to a time other than the present and do then what you are doing now. Or it is wishing the person you were at that time could be willing and doing what the person you are now wills and does. Finally, and worst of all, it can be the old person and the old person’s ways intruding on the present and undermining the new person who is striving to be and become. I feel a little bit of each of these.
Why do I feel timesick today? I am forty-one years old. I wish it had not taken me so long to get to this point in my life where I could embrace Jesus Christ and the Gospel and have a journey like this. I think of my friends who took the leap of faith when they were much, much younger and went abroad for language and cultural immersion, diving in from the deep end. Today I stand in awe of them for their courage, their faith, and their love … and their adventurous spirit. I think of the Confessions of St. Augustine and his ecstatic yet regretful exclamation: “Late have I loved you, O Beauty, ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you.” I am timesick for the friends I never made. I am timesick for the love I never gave or received, or which I recognized too late.
There is something else, too, in this sadness, another dawning of awareness. It is not only a mourning for years spent not living the Gospel with abandon or embracing the extraordinary encounters it brings. It is also a lament for a lack of consciousness, a consciousness that prepares us for living “the joy of the Gospel,” to borrow Pope Francis’ phrase. This is a consciousness that is attuned to the joy and simplicity of everyday life, what some Latina mujerista theologians call la vida cotidiana. Today I think God and my guardian angels are trying to tell me not to underestimate the value of the good things in life, en la vida cotidiana, that I have left behind, or never had, to follow Jesus. Like Augustine, I am late to recognize the ultimate goodness of all created things in God, their ultimate beauty by virtue of the imprint of God’s holy name in them; and, in the breath of every living thing, an echo of the whisper of the Spirit who says, “Beloved.” But as I sit in this bus to Tarata, with Laguna Angostura, the Andes, and the Bolivian sky in my eye, I know I am also unlike Augustine. For I am even later in loving the beauty of things in themselves, or of people in themselves. How I have failed to appreciate the loveliness of life in itself, before or without the light of grace. Was the light of nature not enough for me? Which brings me back to the timesickness and that tugging, hollow feeling. How immature my renunciations for Christ seem today. It is one thing to give up things you don’t know, you don’t want, you don’t love. It is another to give up things you know, things you want, things you love. Doing the former is doing nothing at all. Doing the latter is everything, everything.
This brings me to today’s Gospel reading and my lectio, which hits home: “Peter began to say to Jesus, ‘We have given up everything and followed you.’ ” I never noticed that word, began, before. Peter began to say. Dear God, by your grace and mercy I think I am beginning to be able to say, “We have given up everything,” and really mean it, because now I know better the value of what I am leaving or have left. I value these things because God has put a love in my heart for these beloved ordinary things, these beloved ordinary people. I am beginning to say, “I have given up everything,” and it hurts. I don’t need to make a resolution to give up particular things this Lent. I feel a consciousness rising of everyone and everything I love. That’s enough to put me into a spirit of penitence—penitence for indifference, penitence for inattention, penitence for ignorance. To these dear ones and dear things I say, I am sorry I did not acknowledge you, I am sorry I did not appreciate you, I am sorry I did not attend to you. I missed the moment—I missed you—and in God’s name I am sorry, because now I have to go, and I do not have the right to carry you with me.
As for Peter, I wish to say to him, I have empathy for you. Often I have dismissed his declaration as pride: See, we did what the rich young man could not do. But I have a different impression of him now, today. Suppose Peter says what he says not to boast, but to express surprise and sorrow: surprise at discovering the real costliness of this grace, and sorrow because it hurts. He really is losing everything. Is Peter sad, is he longing, is he afraid? Well, I am trying to say what he is saying to Jesus, and this is what I feel, all of it.
Jesus’ response is unbelievable, yet so real and merciful. Peter will now receive everything he has given up and many times over, in joy and pain, in this life and eternal life. There is more behind these lines of Scripture. Up to now you have not been immersed in the love of God. So what. You are now. Give up. Live in this love.
No one gets to do over the past. The do-over is today. Dear God, thank you for bringing me this deeper consciousness, though it is bittersweet. Don’t let the old person overtake the new person you are creating. Keep fear and prolonged sadness away. Ease my timesickness and give me the courage and good cheer to do over yesterday with today, to rise to whatever arises in my life. Amen.
Postscript: I misunderstood what we were going to be doing today in Tarata. I thought we were going to have a k’oa for the celebration of ch’alla. Rather we visited the Franciscan fraternity that resides there and runs a retreat house. This morning we had a spiritual conference given by an Italian friar in residence. At midday we had a prayer service led by the student friars with a reflection on mercy, an examination of conscience, a call to repentance, and a renewal of our baptismal vows through a renunciation of old ways. Fitting, very fitting, but I confess my wandering mind was elsewhere. But I was brought back to attention, and to tears, by the solidarity of these brothers with one another, and by their convivencia. They are sharing life together, not only in the realm of grace, but also in the everyday, la vida cotidiana.
I finish this day’s entry under the shade of palm trees in the cloister garden at Tarata. I have wandered the ample grounds of this retreat house. I have seen a peacock; I have prayed at a wishing well; I was tempted to pluck the oranges and peaches from the trees. Lord, have mercy. Saint Augustine, pray with us.
What a wonderful reflection...I read it on Ash Wednesday morning. I copied this selection to my journal: " It is one thing to give up things you don’t know, you don’t want, you don’t love. It is another to give up things you know, things you want, things you love. Doing the former is doing nothing at all. Doing the latter is everything, everything. " As I uncover, recover and discover the gifts that God has given me/us, I am grateful for the whole post, Brother Anthony, and the opportunity to celebrate the present during this Lent with the new gifts given and shared!
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