The Valley Catholic August 20, 2019 | Page 15

tvc.dsj.org | August 20, 2019
COMMENTARY
15
Divine Understanding
By Rev. Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Theologian, teacher, award-winning
author, and President of the Oblate
School of Theology in San Antonio, TX
A number of years ago at a symposium on faith
and evangelization, one of the speakers made a rather
startling statement. She, a Christian activist, ended
her presentation with words to this effect: I work for
the poor and I do it out of my Christian faith. I’m committed
to this because of Jesus, but I can go for three years on the
streets without ever mentioning his name because I believe
that God is mature enough that he doesn’t demand to be the
center of our conscious attention all the time.
Like many others in the audience, I’d never heard a
spiritual writer or preacher ever say this so bluntly. I’d
heard biblical scholars speak of God’s self-emptying
in the incarnation, of Christ’s burying himself into
anonymity, and of God’s patience in being ignored,
but I’d never heard anyone say so plainly that God
doesn’t mind that we don’t give him explicit attention
for long periods of time.
But is this true? Is God okay with this kind of
neglect?
There’s an important truth here, though only if it’s
sufficiently qualified. Taken as it stands, this can be
used to justify too many things (spiritual laziness,
selfishness, excessive self-preoccupation, culpable re-
sistance to deeper thought, excessive procrastination
with what’s important, and countless other things)
that are not good. But here’s its truth: God under-
stands! God is a loving parent who understands the
inattentiveness and self-preoccupation of his children.
God has not put us into this life primarily to see
if we can keep our attention focused on him all the
time. God intended for us to immerse ourselves in
the things of this world without, of course, forgetting
that these things are, at the end of the day, passing,
and that we’re destined for a life beyond this world.
We’re not on this earth to be always thinking of the
eternal, though we’re not on earth either to forget
about the eternal.
However, because the unexamined life is less than
human, we also need to have moments where we
try to make God the center of our conscious aware-
ness. We need regular moments of explicit prayer, of
meditation, of contemplation, of worship, of Sabbath,
of explicit acknowledgement of God, and of explicit
gratitude to God. We do need moments when we
make ourselves consciously aware that there is a next
life, an eternal one, beyond this present one.
It’s not easy to keep God as the
center of our conscious attention;
but God both knows this and is
not unsympathetic.
But, in the end, that’s not in competition with or
in contradiction to our natural focus on the things of
this life, namely, our day-to-day relationships, our
families, our work, our concerns for health, and our
natural focus on news, sports, entertainment, and en-
joyment. These are what naturally draw our attention
and, done in good will and honesty, will in the end
help push our attention towards the deeper things
and eventually towards God. The great mystic, John
of the Cross, tells us that if we’re sincere and honest as
we focus on the mundane things in our lives, deeper
things will happen, unconsciously, under the surface,
and we will grow closer to God.
For example, the famed monk, Carlo Carretto,
shares this story: After living many years alone as a
hermit in the Sahara desert and spending countless
hours in prayer and meditation, he went back to Italy
to visit his mother. She was a woman who had raised
a large family and who had gone through years of her
life when she was too burdened with responsibility
and duty to spend much time in explicit prayer. What
Carretto discovered to his surprise was that she was
more contemplative than he was, not because all those
hours of explicit prayer as a monk weren’t good, but
because all those selfless tasks his mother did in rais-
ing her family and caring for others were very good.
And God understands this. God understands that
we’re human, spiritually frail, busy, and instinctually
geared towards the things of this world so that we
don’t naturally move towards prayer and church, and
that even when we are at prayer or in church, we’re
generally still distracted, tired, bored, impatient,
thinking of other things, and longing for prayer and
church to be over with.
It’s not easy to keep God as the center of our con-
scious attention; but God both knows this and is not
unsympathetic.
Kate Bowler, coming at this from the Mennonite
tradition, comments on what the Church calls “Or-
dinary time,” that is, those times during the year
when, unlike the Advent, Lenten, Christmas, or Easter
seasons, there is nothing special to celebrate. What
happens then? Well, what happens then is that things
get “ordinary”: “There is no birth at the manger or
death on the cross, just the ponderous pace of people
singing, praying, and keeping their kids quiet during
the sermon. The magic fades and reveals the church
for what it is: a plain people in a boring building who
meet until kickoff.”
Yes, most of the time that’s us, plain people in
boring buildings waiting for the kickoff. And God
understands perfectly.
Blessed Junipero Serra
1713-1784
August 28
A Spanish missionary who is buried in California, Miguel Jose Serra
was born on the Mediterranean island of Majorca. He entered the
Franciscans in 1730, taking the name Junipero to honor an original
companion of St. Francis of Assisi. He taught after being ordained,
but in 1749 volunteered for mission work among the Indians of
Mexico and Texas. In 1767, the Franciscans under Father Serra
took charge of the missions in Baja California, and in 1769 he
accompanied a military expedition into Alta (upper) California,
where he founded nine of the 21 missions stretching from San
Diego to Sonoma. Beatified in 1988, he is the inspiration for Serra
International, which encourages and affirms vocations.
Saints
© 2013 Catholic News Service
The Veranda Opens in Cupertino -- Bishop Oscar Cantú, far left, joined staff from Catholic
Charities and Charities Housing - along with local community leaders, government officials
and housing advocates - to celebrate the opening of The Veranda on August 12 in Cuper-
tino. The Veranda is a 19-unit newly constructed housing development for seniors, with
six units set aside for chronically homeless persons. It is also the first affordable housing
development funded by the 2016 voter-approved housing bond (Measure A).