In the Waiting Room

2010. A new year has begun, on the world’s calendar. In the Church, our new year began with Advent of 2009. “Advent,” for many Catholics these days, needs explanation. Indeed, “waiting in expectation” needs explanation! Swept up in a 24-7 culture of fast foods, credit-card lifestyles and instant gratification, “waiting” for anything at all is a bizarre concept.

But “waiting” is exactly what we all are doing, in this brief and transient life on this earth. The big question is, and it is a defining question for each man and woman, “What are you doing while you wait?” We were asked for no input about our birth – we were born, and now we are – we have life – we were given life. We have been and will be asked nothing about the fact of our death: we will die, each of us, without question. This time in the “waiting” room, however long it is to be, is pure gift. How are we using the gift? How will we use the minutes, hours, days or months remaining to us here? Are we preparing for the Christ who is to come? Are we living in Advent? Are we living in the Christ who is here?

Yesterday evening, as we waited in church for the Vigil Mass to begin (The Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God), as I often do I was reading and prayerfully pondering Scripture. And also, as often (or usually) happens, I was fighting inside myself to concentrate on the Word against the constant and loud words of worldly conversations going on around me. One would think that a church would be safe! One would think that a church would be quiet, in prayer, focused on God and not on what Alice said to Alfred yesterday or how Melissa feels about that. One would think that “How’s it going?” might be information that could wait for more appropriate times or places. Maybe all these apparently urgent topics could be entrusted to the Lord in prayer while in church, since there He is in the Tabernacle – Body, Blood Soul and Divinity – listening and waiting for our notice and attention.

We need to discover that we are in the presence of the Holy in every moment! We walk on holy ground, we are surrounded by witnesses, and we are entrusted with a mission! There is a purpose that deserves to permeate our lives in this time of waiting.

Another way of saying this is, we need to grow in the life of prayer. We need to develop and mature in that love-relationship, that holy communion with God, that is our life of prayer. Yesterday I put in the mail the manuscript of the revised edition of my book, The Interior Liturgy of the Our Father. Alba House, the publishing division of the Society of St. Paul, published my first book The Ordinary Path to Holiness, and my hope is they will publish this second one also. Please pray with me that God will use my humble offerings, that they might be seeds planted with the water of His grace.

Both of these books are devoted to growing in the life of prayer; I believe the need among Catholics for help in this is crucial, foundational, essential – and urgent. The world needs the witness of life in Christ!

This is the vocation of the Church: to be His sacrament in the world, to be Christ among men! A great darkness is growing, a true and spiritual famine among us, an impoverishment within us, a horror of solitude, a running from silence, a desolation in the soul – and so many are rushing to tranquilize this growing disquiet with noise, and more busyness, the 24-7 culture of fast foods, credit-card lifestyles and instant gratification. And even with nervous and pointless chatter while in the Holy Presence of God. They are hungry! The world is hungry; the Church is entrusted. Let us, this new year, live the life He has given us.

Thomas