Loving A Hidden God
PERSEVERANCE: "WALK ON!"
I am still forging ahead, still walking, still on the road, still extending myself. I have not yet arrived. So if you too are walking, if you are reaching out, if you are concentrating on the things in front of you, forget about the past. Don't look back at the past lest you get stuck there. Walking means you are forging ahead. Always be displeased what your are if you wish to finally arrive at what as yet you are not. Whenever you become satisfied with yourself, there you will stay. Don't stop on the road, don't turn round and go back, don't wander off the road. You stop if you don't forge ahead. You go back if you turn back to what you have left behind. You wander off the road, if you forsake Christ for some new guru. A lame person who limps along on the road makes greater progress than a swift runner who abandons it.
Sermon 169, 18
Augustine once said that the fundamental task for us in this life is twofold: we must control ourselves and we must endure. (Sermon 38, 1) We must control ourselves on the good days so that we will not be so overcome by the joy of feeling fine, the joy of feeling victorious, the joy of being in love, that we will become crazy with our temporary present ecstasy and refuse to go on with our lives. Sometimes on our good days we humans do go a little insane. We pitch our little tent next to our delicious "now's" and dance and dance as though "now" could be "forever." It is on such good days that there us a need for us to control ourselves, fervently enjoying the moment but not trying to hold onto it. No matter how hard we try, we cannot do it. We can't stay young forever. We can't hold onto our loves forever. Our times move on and so do we. We are irresistibly drawn into our future. The river of our days rolls on and we cannot stand against it without being destroyed.
We must control ourselves in the midst of our exciting days, but we must also endure the lengthening of those days that are not exciting, days which may become increasingly burdensome because they are filled with pain or because they just seem to be all the "same". These days filled with "sameness" are the days on which we feel sluggish in our lives and somewhat useless and very much alone.
There is no question that there is a weariness that comes from any kind of prolonged living this side of death. Indeed, some of us seem to fear getting tired even of eternal life. Augustine spent much effort in reassuring his friends that if they made it to heaven they would not be bored there. (Cf. On Catechizing the Uninstructed, 1, 25; Sermon 243, 9; Commentary on Psalm 83, 8) They just did not seem to be too sure that eternal happiness would be all that happy. The first heavenly day might be fine but what about the next and the next and the next ad infinitum? Even Eden seems to have paled for the first humans and they went off looking for something entirely different.
We are all pilgrim people, on the road to a distant place that is our true home, and there is a deep-boned tiredness that comes with days and years of traveling. A pilgrim may be exhilarated at first with the excitement of each new day's possibility but as the days lengthen into months and years, tedium can build. As we travel one place seems much the same as the next, the problems that are brought to us are ever the same. Solving the problem of one person on Tuesday, we find another bringing the same problem to us on Wednesday. It gets to the point where you begin to think that for any society and indeed any human being the best that can be hoped for is mediocrity. As we plod through life seeking that heaven where good is triumphant, where no one has problems, where there is universal peace, where there is no wasting time on trivialities, we may slowly run out of steam after too many days on the road.
I have heard that when wandering nomad tribes meet on the roads of Afghanistan, they greet each other with the words:
STARU MASHAI!
MAY YOU NOT BE WEARY!
It seems a fitting prayer for one who has been on the road for a long, long time. In the psalms this weariness of the tiring traveler is recognized in the admonition to the human race:
Trust that God will protect us from the evils that come at night and the scourge of the noon-day devil.
Psalm 91, 5-6
In medieval times this image of the noon-day devil was used to stand for the special temptation that can come to us after years of doing the same thing day after day. It is the temptation to flee from the weariness of accustomed roads, to strike out after something new or to just give up all effort and sit by the side of the road.
When this noon devil attacks me, I may begin to reach for anything that promises more excitement, more fulfillment than the loves and life that I have become bored with. It is not that my accustomed life is so bad; it is just too filled with sameness! The devil whispers:
The only thing wrong with you is the place you are, the job you are stuck with, the people who surround you. You need to seek new horizons. THEN you will be able to fly again! Why plod along your usual paths when you could reach for the stars if only you would break free from your old life?
It is a destructive temptation if I give in to it. In such foolish experimentation I could destroy myself. I would discover to my horror that the only problem with my life is ME! I realize that in fact I am nothing more than an aging wounded beast with crazy dreams, that I am a weary creature who suddenly has become long on silliness and very short on the grace of perseverance.
This gift of perseverance is necessary for every human being to get through life, but it is especially important for those who are trying to live a "good" life, a life in imitation of Jesus Christ. Those who are identified as "good people" have the burden of the expectation that they will always be good, that their supposedly good character will always shine through in difficult times. Such a life of virtue stretching into a seemingly limitless future is indeed a very good life, but it also can become boring.
You get to the point where there seems to be no excitement in being good day after day. You begin to feel like the vulture in the poster once given to me when I was in college administration. The old bird was sitting on a brilliantly orange dead tree underneath a bright blue sky looking stolidly out over a shimmering yellow desert. It had obviously been sitting there for a long time, hunched over with eyes half-closed next to an equally somber friend. Finally it muttered to its neighbor:
PATIENCE, HELL!
I want to KILL something!"
The message was clear: old birds can get bored even in a world of brilliant hues if they sit too long on the same branch. It had an immediate effect on my career as a college administrator. I resigned. It also had a message for me as a struggling Christian. Through the grace of God I may be mostly good, but it takes another special grace to keep me from becoming good and bored.
There is much truth in Augustine's observation found in his Commentary on Psalm 106 (# 4-8) that there are at least four obstacles standing in the way of anyone trying to come to love the still hidden God.
First, you must discover the truth about yourself and the universe in which you live and then you must come to understand (in the light of that truth) what you should do with your life. This is not an easy task. It took Augustine 28 or more years before he became convinced that the way of life for him was the path shown by the life and words of Jesus Christ.
Second, once you have found out what you should do, how you should act in order to live a life that will lead to God, then you must choose to go ahead and DO something about it. Literally this is easier said than done, as Augustine discovered. Even after he had become convinced that the way of life taught by Christ was indeed the way to the happiness of heaven, he still hesitated. He prayed: "Let me change my life, but not just yet!" and "just not yet" turned out to be two full years of vacillation.
Third, once one has discovered what the good life is and has been converted to live such a life and indeed successfully begins to live such a life day after day, there is a boredom that can set in, a tiredness in doing the good day after day, year in and year out. If you will, one burns out living a virtuous life day after day, in fulfilling all one's responsibilities day after day, in doing one's job of being a decent human being day after day. Augustine experienced such stress when he reached fifty and was forced to take time off to regain his energy.
Finally, if one has found the truth and has decided to act accordingly and has mastered the knack of continuing to be excited and vigorous in living the good life, then others will look at you with admiration and say:
That fellow really has his life in order;
let's put him in charge!"
This too was a burden that Augustine bore. After 30 years of trying to find the truth and then getting the strength to follow it, he spent the next 46 years worrying about those he had been chosen to guide.
I suspect that most of us will go through the cycle of the first three burdens many times in the course of a lifetime and many of us (through parenthood or a job) will end up being "put in charge" of the welfare of others. For most of us there is a continuing discovery of the way of the Lord: ... the way the Lord wants us to act with our passion,
... the way the Lord wants us to exercise our ambition,
... the way the Lord wants us to love our human loves,
... the way the Lord wants us to deal with our growing older, our sickness, and (eventually) our dying.
After each revelation there is the challenge act on our discovery, doing the right thing:
... by fleeing the situations which make us lose control of our passions
... by accepting the job we now know the Lord wants us to do
... by releasing our hold on this human love that we have been clutching too tightly
... by taking our medicine to remedy our sickness
... by ceasing the pretense of being young and taking a nap to support our aged bones.
... by facing our death with hope
Once we have accomplished our victory over passion or ambition or selfish love or fantasy about our health, age, and inevitable death, we may begin to act in a newly virtuous way only to be faced with a new boredom as our "new" life quickly becomes old. We get tired and begin to look around for something different. The fact of the matter is that the longer we live the more ways will perseverance be needed.
The final challenge will be to persevere in our death patiently and with anticipation for what is to come. Once we die we will not need perseverance any more; we will have persevered. But up to that point we cannot be sure that we will make it. Even when he was 74 years old, Augustine worried whether or not he would finally persevere. As he told his friends:
A perseverance whereby one perseveres clinging to Christ to the very end is a very great gift of God. I say "to the end" because it is only when life is over that the danger of failure is past. You will never know for sure this side of death whether you have received the full gift of persevering. For truly, you have not persevered if you fall away before you die.
On Perseverance, 1
What Augustine was telling his audience (and us) was that as long as we live there will be the temptation to look back to the joys of the past rather than look forward to our future with the Lord. As long as we live this side of our death we can make the mistake of Lot's wife. Augustine says to us:
Remember the wife of Lot. She was free and on the road away from Sodom. She was on the road to salvation but then she looked back and never again moved from that spot. She was turned into a statue of salt so that her salty example might preserve us over our long haul to heaven. Her example is given so that we might take heart and not become foolish and stop in the midst of our own journey. Look at what happened to her when she stopped, and continue your own progress. See what happened to her when she looked to the past, and concentrate on your own future.
Commentary on Psalm 69, 9
Augustine prayed for perseverance until his dying day. At the very end of his life he asked his people to release him from his pastoral duties so that he might contemplate the future that was rushing towards him. He was a very sick man by then but still not without a sense of humor. When they brought him a man to be cured, he remarked that if he was good at curing he would have cured himself long before. Then he prayed for the man and he was cured. Augustine then went back to his prayers for himself. But he did not pray that he would be cured but that he would remain faithful to the end.
He was not unhappy nor was he fearful for his future. He prayed for perseverance because he was convinced that he would die as he was born, a cracked pot, and that a last minute failure was always possible. But he was also happy because he knew that soon his healing would be over. He was happy because he remembered the words of his mentor, St. Paul:
Remember that Jesus Christ, a descendant of David, was raised from the dead ... You can depend on this: If you have died with him, you shall also live with him; If you hold out to the end, you shall also reign with him.
2 Timothy, 2:8-12
The dying Augustine remembered these words and knew that soon he would realize that promise. At the moment of death he knew he had persevered.
With the help of God's grace Augustine persevered. As he entered heaven he may have sung the song of love he had written so many years before. The words are the song of those who have "survived", who have bravely persevered till the end, and who are now rejoicing in the heavenly city:
I love you, my God, not prudently but with a mad passion. You pierced my heart with your Word and I fell in love with you. Suddenly all creation, the heavens and the earth shouted to me from all sides to love you.
But what is it that I love when I love you? It is not bodily beauty nor is it the graceful rhythm of your movement. It is not your brilliant light (a light which, by the way, is a dear friend to these poor old eyes). Neither is my love for you like the sweet melody of an infinite song, nor the fragrance of flowers, nor the flavors of fine ointments or spices or good bread or sweet honey. When I love you I don't love arms that can hug and be hugged in fleshly embrace. These are not the things I love when I love you, my God.
And yet, when I love you, it is something like loving a light or a voice or the pleasant smell of good food or the feel of a warm embrace that reaches deep inside me. When I love you a light does shine in my soul, a light too big to be trapped in such a tiny place. And when I love you there, it is like a haunting timeless melody and a delicious fragrance that never dissipates and a delightful flavor that never pales. And when I love you, I am embraced by an embrace that never weakens. That is what it is like when I love you, my God.
Confessions, 10, 27; 10, 6
On the other side of perseverance this is what awaits all of us. Our brave journey towards the love of the hidden God will finally be over. And we shall be very, very happy.