Real
Love Waits
T
wo disciples went to the Master and asked him for the secret of holiness.
The Master said, "Wait," and walked away.
After
an agitated week one of them came back to the Master and said, "Master
what is the secret of holiness?"
The
Master again said, "Wait. Send me your companion."
The
other disciple came to the Master and asked,
"Is
there something else, Master?"
"No,"
the Master replied.
Waiting
is very important in our lives. It is becoming more and more difficult
in the modern world. At some point each of us has to just sit there
and wait. Lovers have to wait, mothers have to wait, fathers have
to wait. You can say, "I love you… I care for you…
I would give my life for you," but you cannot make another person
respond. It is up to the other person to say "I too want to give
you my life" or "I don't know what you are talking about."
After all is said and done, there is waiting. You are out of control.
All action really ends in passion. This is true most especially when
one is faced with a life that ends in chronic or terminal illness.
Our
understanding of waiting is crucial for our understanding of Christ's
passion and then of our own. Passion can be seen as waiting for what
other people are going to do. God reveals himself in Jesus as the
one who waits on our response. In this way the intensity of God's
love is revealed to us. If God pressed his love on us it would not
be really love.
Jesus
went to Jerusalem to announce the Good News. He knew that he was going
to challenge the people there to a choice; to be his disciples or
to be his executioners. There would be no in-between. He did not just
go there to die. He knew that his message would not be accepted but
he went there to offer a choice, to put people in a situation where
they have to say "yes" or "no." It is part of
the great drama of Jesus' passion that he had to wait on how people
would respond. The agony of Jesus is not just in having to die but
also in having to wait for our response. He got "no" for
an answer.
In
this God shows himself depending on us for how he is going to live
out his divine presence among us. In a very mysterious way we decide
how God is to be God. Can you get a glimpse of this incredible mystery,
that God has given to the world - to you and to me - not only the
power of being but also the power to effect God? That is the mystery
of God's incarnation. God became human so that we could act upon him
and he could be the recipient of our response. In that sense Jesus
is waiting in the garden - he is waiting for a response - he has given
all that he can give. Here we are touching the nature of God's love
- here we come to see how much of loving is waiting.
This
is very important for us when we are faced with the final waiting
in our lives. He had to wait as all sorts of people acted upon him.
In this we see that is it possible for us to fulfill our vocation
as human beings not just through action but also through passion.
Do we see our passion, our waiting, our being inutile, as a disturbing
interlude while we really want to go back to the action of the past,
or do we see it as part of the divine plan? God saved us by allowing
people to act on Jesus. Our final act of openness to him, our salvific
act, is to wait as God acts on us.
What
Lent and the message of the passion of Jesus seems to be saying to
us is that it is precisely in our waiting that the Glory of God, the
new life of resurrection, also becomes a reality for us as it did
for Jesus.
