THE SACRAMENT OF WAITING
Reposting THE SACRAMENT OF WAITING, an excerpt from God's Crooked Lines: The Search for Truth by James F. Donelan, S.J. that did the email forwarding circuit in late 2007.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
THE SACRAMENT OF WAITING
How difficult it is that a desire for something is planted in our
hearts, yet it is withheld from us. What comes to mind is a baby in a
mother's womb, already a baby, yet still being formed. Or a mango tree
filled with fruit, yet not ready for the picking, still waiting to
ripen.
Many years ago, while wrestling with the word waiting, I happened to
be at the 12:15 p.m. mass at the AIM Chapel when Father Donelan, S.J.
delivered this beautiful sermon. It spoke to me so clearly. It was
what my heart needed to hear. In fact, I went back for the same day's
afternoon mass and listened to Fr. Donelan read it again.
THE SACRAMENT OF WAITING
(from God's Crooked Lines: The Search for Truth
by James F. Donelan, S.J.)
The English poet John Milton wrote that those also serve who only
stand and wait. I think I would go further and say that those who wait
render the highest form of service. Waiting requires more discipline,
more self-control and emotional maturity, more unshakable faith in our
cause, more unwavering hope in the future, more sustaining love in our
hearts than all the greatest deeds of derring-do go by the name of
action.
Waiting is a mystery - a natural sacrament of life. There is a meaning
hidden in all the times we have to wait. It must be an important
mystery because there is so much waiting in our lives.
Every day is filled with those little moments of waiting, testing our
patience and our nerves, schooling us in self-control --- pasensya
lang. We wait for meals to be served, for a letter to arrive, for a
friend to call or show up for a date. We wait in line at cinemas,
theaters and concerts. Our airline terminals, railway stations and bus
depots are great temples of waiting filled with men and women who wait
in joy for the arrival of a loved one, or wait in sadness to say
goodbye and give the last wave of hand. We wait for birthdays and
vacations. We wait for Christmas. We wait for spring to come or
autumn, for the rains to begin or to stop.
And we wait for ourselves to grow from childhood to maturity. We wait
for those inner voices that tell us when we are ready for the next
step. We wait for graduation, for our first job, our first promotion.
We wait for success and recognition. We wait to grow up, to reach the
stage where we make our own decisions.
We cannot remove this waiting from our lives. It is a part of the
tapestry of living, the fabric in which the threads are woven to tell
the story of our lives.
Yet current philosophies would have us forget the need to wait. "Grab
all the gusto you can get!" So reads one of America's greatest beer
advertisements: Get it now. Instant transcendence. Don't wait for
anything. Life is short. Eat, drink and be merry because tomorrow
you'll die. And so they rationalize us into accepting unlicensed and
irresponsible freedom, pre-marital sex and extra-marital affairs. They
warn against attachments and commitment, against expecting anything of
anybody, or allowing them to expect anything of us. They warn us
against vows and promises, against duty and responsibility, against
dropping any anchors in the currents of our life that will cause us to
hold and wait.
This may be the correct prescription for pleasure, but even that is
fleeting and doubtful. What was it Shakespeare said about the mad
pursuit of pleasure? "Past reason hunted, past reason hated." No, if
we wish to be real human beings, spirit as well as flesh, soul as well
as heart, we have to learn to wait. For if we never learn to wait, we
will never learn to love someone other than ourselves.
For most of all waiting means waiting for someone else. It is a
mystery, brushing by our face everyday like a stray wind of leaf
falling from a tree. Anyone who has loved knows how much waiting goes
into it, how much waiting is important for love to grow, to flourish
through a lifetime.
Why is this? Why can't we have it right now what we so desperately
want and need? Why must we wait - two years, three years - and
seemingly waste so much time? You might as well ask why a tree should
take so long to bear fruit, the seed to flower, or for carbon to
change into diamond.
There is no simple answer, no more than there is to life's other
demands - having to say goodbye to someone you love because either you
or they have made other commitments, or because they have to grow and
find the meaning of their own lives; having yourself to leave home and
loved ones to find your own path. Goodbyes, like waiting, are also
sacraments of our lives.
All we know is that growth - the budding, the flowering of love needs
patient waiting. We have to give each other a time to grow. There is
no way we can make someone else truly love us or we them, except
through time. So we give each other that mysterious gift of waiting -
of being present without making demands or asking rewards. There is
nothing harder to do than this. It truly tests the depth and sincerity
of our love. But there is life in the gift we give.
So lovers wait for each other - until they can see things the same way
- or let each other freely see things in quite different ways. There
are times when lovers hurt each other and cannot regain the balance of
intimacy of the way they were. They have to wait - in silence - but
still present to each other - until the pain subsides to an ache and
then only a memory and the threads of the tapestry can be woven
together again in a single love story.
What do we lose when we refuse to wait? When we try to find short cuts
through life? When we try to incubate love and rush blindly and
foolishly into a commitment we are neither mature nor responsible
enough to assume? We lose the hope of truly loving or of being loved.
Think of all the great love stories of history and literature. Isn't
it of their very essence that they are filled with this strange but
common mystery, that waiting is part of the substance, the basic
fabric against which the story of that true love is written?
How can we ever find either life or true love if we are too impatient
to wait for it?
---------- Forwarded message ----------
THE SACRAMENT OF WAITING
How difficult it is that a desire for something is planted in our
hearts, yet it is withheld from us. What comes to mind is a baby in a
mother's womb, already a baby, yet still being formed. Or a mango tree
filled with fruit, yet not ready for the picking, still waiting to
ripen.
Many years ago, while wrestling with the word waiting, I happened to
be at the 12:15 p.m. mass at the AIM Chapel when Father Donelan, S.J.
delivered this beautiful sermon. It spoke to me so clearly. It was
what my heart needed to hear. In fact, I went back for the same day's
afternoon mass and listened to Fr. Donelan read it again.
THE SACRAMENT OF WAITING
(from God's Crooked Lines: The Search for Truth
by James F. Donelan, S.J.)
The English poet John Milton wrote that those also serve who only
stand and wait. I think I would go further and say that those who wait
render the highest form of service. Waiting requires more discipline,
more self-control and emotional maturity, more unshakable faith in our
cause, more unwavering hope in the future, more sustaining love in our
hearts than all the greatest deeds of derring-do go by the name of
action.
Waiting is a mystery - a natural sacrament of life. There is a meaning
hidden in all the times we have to wait. It must be an important
mystery because there is so much waiting in our lives.
Every day is filled with those little moments of waiting, testing our
patience and our nerves, schooling us in self-control --- pasensya
lang. We wait for meals to be served, for a letter to arrive, for a
friend to call or show up for a date. We wait in line at cinemas,
theaters and concerts. Our airline terminals, railway stations and bus
depots are great temples of waiting filled with men and women who wait
in joy for the arrival of a loved one, or wait in sadness to say
goodbye and give the last wave of hand. We wait for birthdays and
vacations. We wait for Christmas. We wait for spring to come or
autumn, for the rains to begin or to stop.
And we wait for ourselves to grow from childhood to maturity. We wait
for those inner voices that tell us when we are ready for the next
step. We wait for graduation, for our first job, our first promotion.
We wait for success and recognition. We wait to grow up, to reach the
stage where we make our own decisions.
We cannot remove this waiting from our lives. It is a part of the
tapestry of living, the fabric in which the threads are woven to tell
the story of our lives.
Yet current philosophies would have us forget the need to wait. "Grab
all the gusto you can get!" So reads one of America's greatest beer
advertisements: Get it now. Instant transcendence. Don't wait for
anything. Life is short. Eat, drink and be merry because tomorrow
you'll die. And so they rationalize us into accepting unlicensed and
irresponsible freedom, pre-marital sex and extra-marital affairs. They
warn against attachments and commitment, against expecting anything of
anybody, or allowing them to expect anything of us. They warn us
against vows and promises, against duty and responsibility, against
dropping any anchors in the currents of our life that will cause us to
hold and wait.
This may be the correct prescription for pleasure, but even that is
fleeting and doubtful. What was it Shakespeare said about the mad
pursuit of pleasure? "Past reason hunted, past reason hated." No, if
we wish to be real human beings, spirit as well as flesh, soul as well
as heart, we have to learn to wait. For if we never learn to wait, we
will never learn to love someone other than ourselves.
For most of all waiting means waiting for someone else. It is a
mystery, brushing by our face everyday like a stray wind of leaf
falling from a tree. Anyone who has loved knows how much waiting goes
into it, how much waiting is important for love to grow, to flourish
through a lifetime.
Why is this? Why can't we have it right now what we so desperately
want and need? Why must we wait - two years, three years - and
seemingly waste so much time? You might as well ask why a tree should
take so long to bear fruit, the seed to flower, or for carbon to
change into diamond.
There is no simple answer, no more than there is to life's other
demands - having to say goodbye to someone you love because either you
or they have made other commitments, or because they have to grow and
find the meaning of their own lives; having yourself to leave home and
loved ones to find your own path. Goodbyes, like waiting, are also
sacraments of our lives.
All we know is that growth - the budding, the flowering of love needs
patient waiting. We have to give each other a time to grow. There is
no way we can make someone else truly love us or we them, except
through time. So we give each other that mysterious gift of waiting -
of being present without making demands or asking rewards. There is
nothing harder to do than this. It truly tests the depth and sincerity
of our love. But there is life in the gift we give.
So lovers wait for each other - until they can see things the same way
- or let each other freely see things in quite different ways. There
are times when lovers hurt each other and cannot regain the balance of
intimacy of the way they were. They have to wait - in silence - but
still present to each other - until the pain subsides to an ache and
then only a memory and the threads of the tapestry can be woven
together again in a single love story.
What do we lose when we refuse to wait? When we try to find short cuts
through life? When we try to incubate love and rush blindly and
foolishly into a commitment we are neither mature nor responsible
enough to assume? We lose the hope of truly loving or of being loved.
Think of all the great love stories of history and literature. Isn't
it of their very essence that they are filled with this strange but
common mystery, that waiting is part of the substance, the basic
fabric against which the story of that true love is written?
How can we ever find either life or true love if we are too impatient
to wait for it?
posted by montalut @ 6:00 PM
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