Disappointment
Chapter talk, February 7,
2009
By Abbot David Altman, OCSO
Before we know it we will be in the season of sowing,
which is an important concept used in the New Testament Biblical
literature. The Lord used this
concept to great advantage in His parables about the nature of His kingdom and
how we are to arrive at the Kingdom.
The Christian life in its many aspects is always a
seed-planting activity. We offer
to others, we sow the seeds of the theological virtues—faith, hope, and
love—with words and actions and prayers. Our communicative habits are the vehicles by which faith is
transmitted, and especially for us men of prayer, this process is a hidden
one. That is a problem.
In our world we measure success in terms of visible
results. If you canŐt see it, then
it isnŐt there. Value is defined
in terms of a good proportion between input and output, and there is a lot to
say for that principle. What is
the use of all the effort, when there is little gained by the effort? We can be disappointed in the
results of our lives of prayers, and allow this disappointment to grow, until
it becomes an attitude of discouragement and futility, and eventually
motivation to lead a life of prayer is destroyed or reduced to a weakness that
makes it virtually meaningless. We
turn to other activities where we can see immediate results, and make them our
priorities.
We are not too far away from our own farm experience
to be aware of the kinds of effort involved. Let us say one of our neighbors owning a huge field, bought
just a small amount of seed. He
might think with apparent logic that he wants to test the seed and see how it
grows before he invests a lot of labor in it. Why work so hard if the stuff wonŐt produce? That seems smart enough. He proceeds to plant one seed, waters
it over the growing season, to prepare it for the harvest.
By the time he finds out whether the one seed would
produce, the growing season is over.
We can all see through the faulty logic of this farmer, who could never
make a living this way, never mind helping other people by contributing to the
market. Yet we may be inclined to
the same basic attitude and approach.
Why invest our precious gifts of time and energy in some interior,
intellectual activity like prayer, without becoming reasonably sure of success?
I often find that when people confess their sins, they
neglect to confess their lack of trust in GodŐs providential care. They also show a corresponding lack of
faith. God is not a part of their
decision-making process, and so God is not enough a part of their lives.
It is God who guarantees the quality of the Gospel
seed, and that is what all seeds of faith are: expressions of the Good News that Christ has come to save us
from ourselves. God is hidden, and
so His work is largely hidden, and He works through us in hidden ways. Acceptance of this hidden process is
our principle for successfully living out our lives of prayer.
The difficulty is, what we know about the workings of
the principle of sowing seeds of faith and love can also be a source of
discouragement. Why work so hard
when we know what is going to happen to perhaps much of our work? I am reminded of ChristŐs agony in the
garden. Perhaps the greatest agony
for Christ was the sight of future ages and all the people for whom His
ultimate sacrifice would be useless.
The quality of the Gospel seed is divinely guaranteed,
but the results in terms of human acceptance is not at all dependable. Everything depends on the soil of
individual human minds and hearts that receive the seed. We are only the sowers, and God makes
the seed grow, if you remember St. Paul.
Once we have done our work, our vows of poverty come into play. Let it go.
There are three principles for success in life: I love you (that is, I practice
unrelenting good will toward you); wait a minute, letŐs re-examine a situation
for better results; and let it go.
Most peopleŐs problems consist in carrying too much baggage around with
them.
You have done your work, perhaps, only with your
prayer. In contrast to the faulty
thinking of the poor farmer, the more seed you sow, the better the spiritual
harvest that will be reaped, probably by others. Remember the law of averages, if nothing else. The return on our investment of
personal effort is great according to GodŐs plan, and so there is no cause for
disappointment or discouragement.
It has been said that sometimes our disappointments are GodŐs
appointments. The Lord arranges
all things splendidly for our salvation, as we sing now at Tierce. God weaves many seemingly small events
into a series of impressions to win over peopleŐs minds and hearts. These impressions are the seeds of
faith and love. The seed of faith
we once planted, for example, and never saw anything come of it, has been lying
dormant, perhaps for years. We
gave up on that seed a long time ago, but someone finally comes along to water
it, and it grows for a good harvest.
The attractive analogy with farming is accurate even
further here. Years ago in Mexico,
seeds were discovered from the ancient Aztec civilization that were still alive. They were planted and germinated. We just do not know the when and where
of the results of our efforts for God, but we do know that they are for God,
and His infinite power to create can recreate and change everything. What He asks of us is prayer. That is the basic reason our world is
in the state of moral decline: not enough people are praying, and not enough of
us are praying enough. God makes
us responsible for inviting Him into the world. After all, would you go where youŐre not wanted?
Perhaps at this point we can see the basic problematic
attitude that keeps us from our full potential as people of prayer: our hopes
for success are more or less based on our own planning or presentation. The first step in success is to
acknowledge that by ourselves we cannot win. It is the Lord who does the winning. And His infinite desire to see us
succeed in winning people for faith and love is infinitely greater than our
finite desires. In His generosity,
God invites many people to play their parts in a series of events that He
organized to win someoneŐs mind and heart. We have to fight an inclination to play God and do all the
work ourselves.
We have a responsibility to pray, to speak, to plan,
as our participation in GodŐs greater plan. Everyone has a part to play, and the foundation-virtue of
humility asks us to recognize the role of our lives as a part. God alone is the great
orchestra-leader, and no one can arrogate to himself GodŐs role.
During the last visitation at Sonoita, Mother Miriam
and I were talking about vocations, and we agreed that we have been given the
best of them all. The Lord employs
many to give impressions or seeds of faith to others, but we are the ones He
has chosen to emphasize the force given to those impressions through
prayer. Remember our LordŐs
observation of the importance of prayer, the prayer that moves mountains and
expressed the faith that works miraculous healings.
Of course not every seed we plant will bear fruit in
the way we would plan, but we know through faith that if we sow enough seed, we
can be assured of a harvest. The
point is clear: if our efforts at
prayer are not producing seeable results, that is not the excuse to give up,
but the reason to persevere in prayer.
Again, t he more input there is in a given situation, the greater
possible output.
God makes appointments with our efforts, often at a
much later time. The work we have
done is held dormant for a time, maybe many years, and then grace is given to
make the memory of a long past statement or act, work to impress someone with
the reality of faith. After years
of resistance and rejection, people come to truth, not just to initial faith,
but to greater faith, greater personal conversion. That is the work we perform with each other, for each other,
and it is the meaning of the saying that no one goes to heaven alone, but
brings many with him. No one goes
to hell alone, but invites others to go with him.
I like telling people that I pray for them because I
want to take at least part credit for all the good that happens to them. When they ask if I will take credit for
the problems and failures they have, I can respond that at least they have
someone to blame. That is an
important concept as well: that when a world of local situation turns out
badly, it can be blamed, at least in part, on a person assigned by God to a
life of prayer, who is not doing His work well enough.
Each impression we give to someone, whether interior
or exterior, is a Gospel seed. The
human mind and heart are the field.
Maybe those minds and hearts are hardened by ignorance, prejudice, or
even malice, but we know that even the hardness of granite has been cracked by
the seed of a bush or tree that lodges in an opening. God makes openings.
We also know the long-term, persevering effort of water upon rocks, how
they are worn away over time. The
hardest resistance can be worn away by persevering prayer.
The more seed of good words and actions we sow, the
more we have. The Divine provider
of seed will understandably give His work to good workers. We can be consoled that the Gospel is
renewed year after year. Once the
process is begun, those who accept GodŐs word pass on that word, spreading the
truth and love of God beyond the perimeters of their lives.
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