You have made us for yourself O Lord, and our Hearts are restless until they rest in you. Saint Augustine begins his Confessions with this prayer. In this short, beautiful line he expresses how God loves us into being with a divine destiny in mind. As creatures of God we are called to develop to our full potential, but as daughters and sons in christ, we are called to share in divine life - to love as God loves. This is the first point I came to share with you: Almighty God, the Holy Trinity wants to share divine life with you. This is a vocation we are all invited to share.
Now, If there is a destination, then there's a way to get there. Psychologist Adrian Van Kaam says that we make our life our own by the commitments we make. If we are all called to be like God, and yet not all of us make the same commitments, then I think that there are different paths to reach our destination. The way that I find my rest in God is different from the way you may find your rest in God. And yet, I think we can group together some of the different paths by the commitments of love they share in common. For Most people, the significant commitment of love they make is marriage. In marriage, a man and a woman commit themesleves to help each other walk toward God. In that process their mutual love reveal to the rest of us an aspect of God's love: His fidelity. Other people commit themselves personally to God, and live a consecrated single life. They are consecrated lay people, or hermits, or consecrated virgins. Among the men, some become diocesan priests. Lastly, there is a third category of people: These are people who commit themselves to God in the context of a community of brothers or sisters. These are religious sisters and religious brothers. Among the religious brothers, some are called to ordained ministry.
As you can see, there is a great variety of commitments. And even within a particular commitment you find differences: not all marriages are alike, and not all religious people live the same type of religious life. Yet we are all called to the same destination of sharing life with God, and as we walk towards this destination together we are a pilgrim people, we are Church.
I'm speaking as one from the third group: I'm a religious. More specifically, I'm an Augustinian friar. I find inspiring the path of seeking God that St Augustine started 1600 hundred years ago. In order to imitate Christ more freely and more closely, and rooted in the spirit of the early Christian community from the Acts of the apostles, St. Augustine established a community with his friends. The main purpose of such community was to live together in harmony, so as with a single mind and a single heart seek the Lord.
What initially attracted me to religious life and priesthood was not this beautiful vision of community life for the sake of journeying together toward the Lord. Rather, it was the opportunity to serve others in a very meaningful way. After some involvement with church ministries before entering to the Order, I find out when I entered the Novitiate that during the novitiate we were not allowed to be involved in any ministry for that year. I had been used to helping at Church, volunteering every now and then, and all of a sudden I could not do it anymore. What first was surprising news, became upsetting to me. Thanks to my novice director, I learned that I was used to doing a lot of things, to having a busy schedule. Now I had a rigorous schedule, but it was aimed at prayer and solitude.
I heard that among some traditional aboriginal tribes, people who have been journeying for a while sit down so that their spirits can catch up to their bodies. After doing a lot to get into college, and then doing a lot in college to get into grad school, entering the novitiate was like sitting down, and allowing my spirit to catch up to me. Slowly, but painfully, after getting used to being, rather than doing, I started to realize that in my previous running to seeking to serve others, I was trying to fill a void of acceptance in me. At an unconscious level I thought that if I helped others, that I would be accepted by others and by God. After all we all have a deep need to be accepted. On of the blessings of the novitiate was that in the silence of God's presence, I learned to allow myself to be loved by God first. While I was trying to earn drops of the water of acceptance, in the silence of my heart I found God was willing to give me a whole ocean of it. I was loved as I was, without needing to do anything. And after experiencing such acceptance, I can now tell you that you are already loved. We are not on this journey toward God so we can be loved, but we are called to God because we are already loved. We hear that God loves us all the time, but I invite you to truly accept it.
St. Paul tells us today in our second reading:
"For Christ, while we were still helpless,
died at the appointed time for the ungodly.
Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person,
though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die.
But God proves his love for us
in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us."
Think of the consequences: If I am enough for God, then there is nothing I need to hide from God, and if God accepts me as I am, then I can accept myself; and if I can accept myself, then I can accept other people. You can change "accept" for forgive. If God forgives me, then I can forgive myself; and if I can forgive myself because God has forgiven me, then I can forgive other people. I think We hear much of what we should be or should do, and not enough of who we are in Christ - in Christ we are beloved sons and daughters. I do not deny that we are works in progress, that we are in journey, but we are loved at every step of the way. This is the second point I came to share: You are already loved at every step of the journey.
With this great lesson in hand, Last summer I professed my first vows, and I started studies in theology last Fall in Chicago. In the course of my first semester I managed to get so focused on my theological studies, that I started to forget about the vision, the destiny we have in Christ, and the path I had started to walk to get there. The lesson has been the realization that I am quite vulnerable in living out vocation I am called to if I try to do it on my own. I need God's assistance along the way.
We heard in the Gospel of John how Jesus answered to the Samaritan woman:
“If you knew the gift of God
and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,
you would have asked him
and he would have given you living water.”
If you knew the Gift of God, Jesus says. If we knew the gift of God! In acknoledging who we are as recipients of the gift of God, we may realize all the more that we do not need to strive to earn the gift. After all, a gift is free. We can become accustomed to thinking that all there is is the regular water that the samaritan woman went to get everyday, when in fact God is waiting for us to accept his living water. How easy it is to mistake one for the other. To confuse our dreams for plans. How easy it is to resignate ourselves, to focus on our thirst that we forget about the living water. Like the Israelites from the first reading, who "In those days, in their thirst for water, they grumbled against Moses,
saying, “Why did you ever make us leave Egypt?" (Ex 17, 3) - sometimes we may grumble as well, and wish we were back in our Egypts.
During this time of Lent we are called to repentance. In light of today's Gospel reading, I invite you to see repentance as the opportunity to look beyond the routine thirst of resignation, and helplessness into the living water that has been promised to us. This is my third point: let us nourish our hope. I agree with a theologian who says that When hope is frustrated, it produces sadness, resignation, resentment, and helplessness. I invite you to nourish hope by spending time with the Lord, and by encouraging, and reminding each other of who we are in Christ. Let us enter the silence of our hearts and drink from the Living water Jesus has for us.
So these have been my three points:
We are called to walk toward a sacred destiny
We are already loved every step of the way.
And thirdly, let us nourish the hope we have received.
Carlos J. Medina, OSA
[I gave this talk today at Our Mother of Good Counsel in Homer Glenn, IL)
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