Can I Hear An Amen To That?
In my weekly prayer group, a word that keeps cropping up is anxiety. An amorphous, general, constant anxiety. This despite the fact that so many Scripture passages warn us of the futility of giving into anxiety, of engaging in what the great Trappist monk and spiritual writer Thomas Merton called “useless care.”
Take, for example, Chapter 4 of St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians where he says, “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.” The verse continues, “Then the peace of God that surpasses understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”
It’s a reminder that God can spin gold out of the detritus of our daily worries.
The anxiety I and many of my friends feel is due in large part to the dangerous state of our world right now and the uncertainty over our nation’s future as we inch closer to another Trump presidency. We are not alone. The number of Americans seeking information about living abroad and obtaining dual citizenship has surged since the election, companies that track such requests say.
Curiously enough, many of the recent daily Mass readings describe some of the lowest moments in salvation history. For instance, the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem; the period of Babylonian exile for the people of Israel; and Jesus’ predictions of his own demise and the future of the world: “Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There will be powerful earthquakes, famines and plagues from place to place.”
Sound like the nightly news? It is enough to throw people of any time into despair.
What’s interesting, though, is the enduring faith that comes through — whether it involves the ancient Israelites or Jesus’ earlier followers. That is the belief that God and good will eventually triumph. God is at work even in the seeming chaos. As the 23rd Psalm assures us, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.”
That mindset — that good will win in the end — was on vivid display around my Thanksgiving table this year. As our guests enumerated the things they are grateful for, they mentioned the many good people they know who work tirelessly for the common good.
One of our guests said she gives thanks for the many “small kindnesses” she experiences in daily life, and that she is especially attuned in these fear-and-anxiety-inducing times to both giving and receiving kindness.
Our guest related a recent experience in which she unknowingly dropped her credit card in a store and a woman who saw it fall, picked it up, tapped my friend on the arm and said, “I think you dropped this, ma’am.”
Despite our worries, there are still occasions for rejoicing. One bit of good news is that five and a half years after fire destroyed much of Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral, the landmark church — known as “the soul of Paris” — has been rebuilt and is set to reopen, by many accounts more magnificent than before.
One American pastor in Paris called the resurrection of Notre Dame “a symbol of the perseverance of hope.”
Today begins the liturgical season of Advent when we are asked to wait in perseverance and hope for the coming of Christ into the world. As St. Benedict says in the Prologue to his “Rule” for monastics:
“Let us get up then, at long last, for the Scriptures rouse us when they say: ‘It is high time for us to arise from sleep’. Let us open our eyes to the light that comes from God, and our ears to the voice from heaven that every day calls out this charge: ‘If you hear his voice today, do not harden your hearts.’”
It is a call as well to “be doers of the word, and not hearers only,” as the apostle James says in one of his epistles.
Reflecting on the collective anxiety coursing through our country, another of my Thanksgiving guests rightly observed, “This too shall pass.”
It helps to remember how people of faith faced crises throughout the ages. It helps to keep our senses trained on the goodness and kindness we see around us.
Can I hear an Amen! to that?
