Working for the Rest

In answer to those who criticized His miracles for being performed on the Sabbath, Christ responded:   “My Father is at work until now, so I am at work.”  In essence, Jesus announced His divine essence, Which alone can be both “at work” and “at rest” in perfect simultaneity.  What the Jewish day of rest pointed to chronologically, Christ actually demonstrates in the flesh theologically.  For us, however, work and rest are often experienced as an endlessly negotiated either/or.

To have one’s plans for good work interrupted by illness is, of course, a trial---the personal details of which I have been elaborating on in these meditations since Ash Wednesday.  I share with you today some words I received upon my return to Queen of Peace from my jaw surgery.  The words came in the form of a long letter written by a former student of mine.  Although she is currently studying theology in graduate school in California, she penned this extended encouragement (which at twenty-nine pages is no small amount of work!) over the course of a long retreat which happened to coincide with my pre- and post-operative days in Florida.

I was struck by how our respective times away from ordinary duties coincided.  At one point she wrote:  “Oddly enough, several people that I know from different times in my life are in India right now.  I’ve asked all of them to pray for you---particularly if they see any Missionaries of Charity.  I know Mother Teresa is your 2013 saint friend, so I thought that might make a nice ‘Happy Speedy Recovery’ gift.”  Recall that in an earlier post I recounted receiving Mother Teresa as my “saint of the year,” along with her words:  “Yesterday is gone.  Tomorrow has not yet come.  We have only today---let us begin.”

It is wonderful to think in our rounded globe of a world that our yesterday is someone else’s today, even as our today is also another’s tomorrow.  As I type these words, the Cardinal-electors of our Church are gathered in the Sistine Chapel to do the work in prayer of discerning the next Successor of St. Peter.  Our prayers---half way around the world---help sustain them in their responsibility.  They also prepare, in God’s plan, the “tomorrow” of the Church.  In fact, every child born and sacramentalized and educated today also contributes to the “tomorrow” of the Church, which will be lived in a world ever changing, yet for all that remaining so much the same.  Florida is connected to California is connected to India is connected to Rome is connected to Indiana, and so it goes. . . .

To be a “missionary of charity” through time is to recognize Christ’s work in what one might contrast as our active accomplishments and our passive diminishments.  In another entry, my friend entrusted me to the care of the late Jesuit missionary, Fr. Walter Ciszek:  “I just figure that since you’ll be spending so much time in silence, having a friend who spent years and years in solitary confinement [in the Russian gulag after WWII] might not be a bad idea.  It’s not the same thing, but maybe it’s close enough.  And I think he’s a good example of a priest who was able to live out his vocation in creative ways and under adverse circumstances.”  Fr. Ciszek’s autobiographical With God in Russia and He Leadeth Me are spiritual classics.

In all of the endless commentary pre- and post-conclave about the impossible tasks that the next Pope faces (as every Pope must face)---all of the crushing work that awaits him in what can so often feel by any leader as “solitary confinement”---we should each reflect in prayer on our own daunting responsibilities and unfulfilled tasks---all in light of the saving action and redemptive Passion of Christ.  For the consummation of Jesus Christ’s healing ministry to be His Crucifixion and Resurrection shows us that God’s work is not limited by our abilities or lack thereof.  In Him we each are the one specially “elected” to bear witness to the victory of Love, which gives itself to us and through us---in both our resting and our rising.