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Jesus tells us, "Do not let your hearts be troubled". But how do we not? Is it even possible? He tells how: "have faith also in me". And yet many of us believe ourselves to have faith while often still experiencing troubled hearts. Is there something deficient in such faith? Perhaps deficient isn't the right way to look at it. But it may be true that our faith has not yet had its full effect in renewing our minds. It might extend to God in some abstract sense, but not Jesus in the concrete matters of daily life. And this is how many of us often are. We affirm belief in a creator but are less confident that anyone is still around to run things. We dare not apply our faith to circumstances for fear that they will not turn out well. And yet it has always been a fundamental teaching of the Church that circumstances, whether good or ill, only happen as directed or permitted by God's providential care. If we can learn to believe that God is not only real but that he is also really in control we can dampen the degree of anxiety we feel when things seem to be going poorly in our lives and in the world, as they often and with increasing frequency seem to do.
In my Father's house there are many dwelling places.
If there were not,
would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?
Jesus did not abandon us, but went away specifically for our sakes. He left so that the Spirit could come and unite us to him even more perfectly. He is absent in body but his guidance is even more intimately available to us than ever. Through his enthronement in heaven and his uniting us to himself by his Spirit he is even now preparing our hearts to dwell with him forever. This is no less true when times are difficult. In fact at such times, it is, if anything, even more true, since it is then that our union with him can gain the most strength. When we have the opportunity to prefer nothing to him we also have the opportunity to change our relationship to those things which are merely temporary. Our idols won't save us in our daily struggles. But our relationship with Jesus is the one thing that can sustain us. He is our shelter in the storm, no matter how fierce.
Master, we do not know where you are going;
how can we know the way?
Jesus' plan seems elusive or even convoluted to us much of the time. We protest that we do not really know how to connect what we are supposed to do in our daily lives with this grand vision of union with God forever. But Jesus told Thomas that it was not, after all, so very complicated. Although he did not tell us the future in such a way that we could determine for ourselves the right path, he himself remained present to us, showing us the way. More than trying to solve reality like a riddle we are meant to focus on living in union with Jesus himself. The closer we are to him the more we can be sure that we are in fact going the right way, that we are grounded in the truth, and headed toward eternal life. There is no way to express this that is better than participation in the Sacraments of the Church, in which our unity with Jesus grows. From there, the love of Christ that we receive impels us on. We are sent out on mission to the world, to love the world as Jesus first loved us.
Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.
Perhaps we are too eager to look elsewhere to find what we need. We have been given an embarrassment of riches as our Christian inheritance. We no longer need to search for meaning as though our lives depend on it. We don't need to desperately seek the next experience that might finally fulfill us. We don't need to look to the left or the right. What we need has already been given. He himself already lives within us.
And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left (see Isaiah 30:21).
We are empowered for service, though in a different way from the deacons described in Acts. A significant part of our mission is to ensure that no one is missed or neglected, especially by our prejudices. Each of us has different gifts and will therefore live the mission in different ways. We are to become living stones, each one of us fitting uniquely and irreplaceable into the spiritual house of God. We are all priests, prophets, and kings. But we live these realities differently. For the fullness of God's plans for the world, the full dawning of his "wonderful light", we are all essential.
BNC Digital Music - Proclaim His Marvelous Deeds
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