“The way we are living, timorous or bold, will have been our life”
Seamus Heaney
God Forbid!! That is my earnest prayer.
It need not be that way – the way that Seamus Heaney declared, as distilled from the cynicism of this quote – our lives ‘set frozen in a mould of inertia, unable to move’. No! Because God is a God of Mercy and Righteousness. It would be an outright contravention of the glorious mandate set out in Isaiah 61 (the very passage we heard read during the past weeks of our Easter Season), should God orchestrate fate as it were to merely time itself out over our lives according to mirey circumstances set against us, and especially those circumstances not in favour of His Holy Will, irrespective of what we do to try and change them, in all earnestness and by an unrestrained pleading of virtue. And most particularly should we be like the Gentiles, the Pagans of old, simply in that wretched state because of an ignorance that is not really due to a fault of personal intent (and even when it is that we make the stupidest of choices), God sees us like He saw the Prodigal Son, and prefers to desire us to become as He would like us to become. And so, the entire idea of certain people being “made for destruction” is not by the Holy Will of God that they are so made but they are only that way because they have given themselves over to the World’s moulding and shaping of their existences – and they have not desired to change that. Even then, God can change that. He can change the course of their lives – He can convert hearts. What’s more, it is often said where there’s a will, there’s a way. Let it now be said that where the Holy Will of God is, there’s an even better way. And this is all indicative of His Unfathomable Mercy and Wondrous Love.
When we realize that our lives are indeed timorous, even when we would prefer them to be bold, all we need to do is ask the God Who made us to conform us to the image of Himself in the likeness of His Son – then, and only then, after we have been conformed and changed by the moving of the Holy Spirit, we can become bold. Such was the case with the disciples at the first Pentecost – prior to them experiencing the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit accompanied by His infilling them with profound graces, (particularly after the trial of Calvary), they had become timorous – why, they were always bolting doors to the max “for fear of the Jewish leaders”. But it must be remembered also that boldness has many faces, and some of these faces can even appear on the surface at times to be timorous. Hence, let not “littleness” or apparent “shyness” or “timidity” turn you off. For the Little Flower, our beloved St Therese of Lisieux, was very fond of making “littleness” – the little or small things in life – glorified in their humility for the sake of the Lord’s own glory.
So make not the mistake of frowning on the humble ways in life, just because they may not be bold as the world would have things be bold or as other very different contexts would engender boldness. Courage is not true courage if it be judged either by the world’s standards OR by decontextualizing or dislodging specific necessities from their correspondant situations and imposing a one-size-fits-all approach on every person vis-vis every situation that needs to be tackled with courage. And neither is scorning ‘weakness’ like an arrogant strong-man, the epitomy of true courage. Just because weakness appears contrary to strength, it is not consistent with the Christian message to disparage weakness, especially if and when this weakness is not the kind that is synomimous with deliberate sin. For St Paul said that God’s strength in him is made perfect in his own weakeness.
And so after all, it is a downright shame that some proponents of Christianity should descend to the depths of nihilistic thinking in interpretation of their own creeds and opt instead for the moto that human will-power can solve every problem no matter what. It was Frederich Nietzche who was reputed to have a stern gripe with Christianity because he believed as a philosophy, Christisnity was ‘wrong’ because of its exhortation to show mercy towards the downtrodden, the weak, those who have no power to do anything constructive to change their lives for the better on account of some ghastly oppression weighing so heavily upon them. Does this “unpopularity” which Christianity seems to have gained in the eyes of the world (all because of the pervasive influence of a few 19th and early 20th century nihilistic philosophers), somehow excuse the banal tropification that even some who claim to side with Christianity have donned? And donned at that, dare I say it, out of “cowardice” that if they didn’t try and ‘spruce-up’ Christianity to make it appear glitzy & ritzy or make it yet again seem to conform to the beliefs, theories, and ‘strong-man’ ideologies of the world, according to their unsound fears Christianity would somehow lose adherents and would appear far less attractive to the world? Well, let me tell you this, nothing in the whole wide world can rightfully excuse heretical tropification of the authentic Christian narrative, NOTHING! Even the laudible concern about it possibly dying out. But selling-out one’s moral integrity to the smuttiness of the world will not make Christianity any more popular than will hand feeding bin-chickens successfully deter bin-chickens from ransacking bins 🤣 And further, it is no coincidence that because of mis-use as a political and ideological ‘football’ in the hands of certain ideological interests, Christianity has tragically lost significance for a great swathe of people, particularly in those countries and societies with a history steeped in allegiance to Christianity as an official religion in one way or another.
The bending of our faith into an ideological tool which wields power in the form of guilt-tripping and impersonal coercive scare-mongering as a method to stamp out and trample upon weak souls, treating as utter pestilence, those who merely cry out for mercy and love in a world that does not want them or does not desire to show these least favoured any love, any acceptance or mercy is none other than banal hypocisy of the worst kind. Everyone has an in-built God-given need for love and acceptance – that is, a need to be shown love and given genuine kind-hearted acceptance as “family”. To refuse that to someone just because in your mind’s eye, “that person is ‘too much of a weakling’, is too ‘self-absorbed’, and does not ‘pull their socks up’ or ‘get on with it’ for that matter” is frankly unmerciful. Hence, in your supercharged busy-bodiness of mind, muscle, and will, these types of people are ‘lazy’; and yet all the more still because one or any number of such people have told you in times gone by, just how much they need your friendship, help or loving care which, you btw, are too egotistical and stuck-up to give anymore! This habitual demonstrative lack of mercy is, tragically, an attitude that is gaining popularity within the Church, and dare I say it, even amongst pastors 😠 And that is an accursed situation of an utmost dreaded nature, something too that wreaks of reverberations of Matthew 24 : 15, which is why things need to change heartily within both parish life and other public spheres within the Church generally speaking. In Australia, the grave paucity of pastoral helps and not to mention the correlative prevalence of ill-equipped pastors in the areas of spiritual direction, mental health and chaplaincy is a HUGE part of the problem. The wake-up call to deal with this issue is one that cannot afford any longer to be conveniently swept under the carpet, by both Church leadership and rank & file membership alike. The time of God’s mercy is NOW. Let’s make the most of this opportunity instead of waste it. We are called to collectively contribute to making this positive change on a very personal level. To do so is to align ourselves with and embrace God’s mercy. To IGNORE the importance of living a merciful life through showing love and compassion to those who ask us for it, where and when we are more than able is not only to vent further grave injustice upon already suffering souls here in our midst, but it is also very much adding to the dire peril of one’s own life, should he or she haughtily and habitually choose to ignore the sincere and persistent pleas of those already cast off like rubbish – for those whose lives are so well-to-do but yet they care not when another (who is not so together as they), asks for fraternal support – they are then acting like the Rich Man who cast aside with vain indifference the sufferings of Lazarus. The haughty ones’ prideful dismissal of the call to sow God’s mercy is an invitation to visiting God’s judgement upon themselves.
Endnotes:
This forerunner of a quote by Seamus Heaney, in reference to a thematic punchline contained in the article cited at the outset of this post, caught me somewhat off-guard. And as a result of being caught off guard, I was prompted in earnest to write this post, which btw, is essentially a commentary on Seamus Heaney’s quote, taken from the afforementioned article by Chris McDonnell in La Croix called The Passage of Time. You may click the link at the top of the page to read the original article.
McDonnell refers to the Ascension of Jesus into Heaven, a feast we celebrate 40 days from Easter. He alludes to this feast rather early on in the timing of the liturgical phase of temporale pasquale that we are currently in, and which is, I think rather startling because we have barely celebrated Easter Sunday coupled with Divine Mercy Sunday and yet, Chris McDonnell thinks it’s rather fitting to meditate thematically through this article, somewhat subtley albeit, on the Ascension. But I suppose, when you come to think of it, in the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary, the very next mystery we are invited to contemplate after that of Our Lord’s Resurrection is not so much that of His appearing to the disciples after He rose from the dead but that of His Glorious Ascension into Heaven. In some ways though, I’m glad there is another 40 day window of time between Easter Sunday and the Ascension because it gives us time to understand the reality and fullness of Our Lord’s Resurrection. And that’s precisely it I think too – that Jesus Himself saw it fitting to remain on earth a sizable portion of time following rising from the dead and one that no doubt purposefully followed the 40 day pattern of the Lenten sojourn in the wilderness as testament to His decisive victory over all the powers of Hell that were sent against Him – from the time He was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness until the final discharge of His triumph over ALL sin and death as well as the Devil, on Calvary, and when He went into the netherworld to set ALL the captives free, culminating in His Victory Cry and Resurrection from the dead.
And I think that there is a kind of sublimity in Chris McDonnell’s article that presents Christ’s victorious Easter triumph as the exemplary of bold. We may also add that prior to the Resurrection, and especially during the trial and all the events of Good Friday, many of the disciples were timorous in the sense they succumbed to the onerousness of dread, which in many ways can be an understandable and natural human reaction to something which on one level took them somewhat utterly by surprise even though on another, they had been thoroughly prepared for this hour by their Lord, Jesus Himself. Take Peter’s denial as a classic example. It must be said here though, it is a great mystery how the passage of time flows, and with it there is so much tumult at times, chaos in the logic of the way it flows – and yet, the hand of God is not obstructed. It is there, sovereignly guiding the passing of the hours, with all their juxtaposed twists and turns. And so it turns out, that by such vicissitudes, in this chaotic sprawling of events that the Scriptures were fulfilled. We are even told in the Scriptures themselves that were it not for certain things happening in certain paradoxical ways, the Prophecies would remain unfulfilled. And so it is here that we are left with the moral obligation to develop a sensitive conscience coupled with, gratitude, wonderment, and awe, about how the Holy Will of God is accomplished in our lives, and in the midst of all life, generally speaking. That’s why there are many things which are unfathomable to us and which necessarily need by virtue of Divine Providence coupled with Natural Law, to be relegated to the realm of mystery – something though that is constantly unfolding around us and at times in imperceptible ways.
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