ORA ET LABORA
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
February 20, 2021
I read a very interesting article this week in a Catholic
publication which distinguished between our thinking about how we imagine ourselves
to be in this world. On one hand are those
of us who would think of our world as “fallen”, that is in the grip of sin,
from which we cannot escape by our own efforts.
On the other hand, are those of us who imagine ourselves to
be in a world that is “imperfect”, which may seem a meaningless difference, but
it matters a lot. The articles author,
Fr. Matt Malone S.J. put it this way:
“A fallen world requires a divine redeemer. An imperfect society just needs a better
plan, and better people to execute it. In a fallen world, redemption comes through the sheer gratuity of the
redeemer. In an imperfect society,
redemption is won through collective self-improvement.”
To bring this rather cerebral distinction down to earth and
closer to home, I have always remembered the observation, some 25 years ago, of
one of our own archdiocesan priests, Fr. Mike Anderson, talking about his
experiences of celebrating the Sacrament of Reconciliation in various parishes
around here. He told me that in some community’s
people engaged that sacrament in order to acknowledge sin in their lives, and
to beseech God’s grace to overcome it, and to forgive it, and to help them to
be stronger.
In other communities, he said, people didn’t so much speak
of “sin, as they spoke about “stuff they are working on”. Sin was a forbidden word for some. So what’s the difference? Very much, actually, because it raises the
question of who is really doing the work of conversion here. Is it I, or is it God? How we think about that determines everything about how we go about confronting this season of Lent. What is my role during these days of spiritual
renewal?
Is it to double-down and to work with even more energy and
intention about making myself better? Or
is it to hand over my spiritual plans and schemes to God, without whom I’ll never be better? Is it holding on tightly
and resolutely to what I’m already doing? Or is it to surrender to what I can’t or don’t want to do at all? Being guided by another? And does this mean that I am now kind of
strong in my quest to know God, and I just need to get stronger? Or does it mean that I am weak, and need to
admit it?
Well I’m sorry to be the articulator of your Catholic faith
today, but the honest answer to all of these questions is “yes”. As it is so often, its “both-and”.
Our Gospel of Mark tells us that today. It speaks of the temptations of Jesus just
after his baptism by John. He was sent
by God to a deserted place for a time of trial – both be encountered by
Satan –that is forced to become strong in the face of evil- AND to be
ministered to by angels-that is to be made to rely on the grace that only God
could give, and that would only be sufficient to win his victory.
We live in that same both-and condition today, with Jesus as
our model. As Fr. Anderson might say, we
need the season Both to be more acknowledging of our sin and weakness and
dependence on God- And to be “working on stuff” with ever greater effort
and dedication.
In fact, the one thing we may not do this Lent is to
default to one extreme or the other in the quest for spiritual health. We may not simply throw up our hands
and hearts, and say that the transformation of ourselves and of our community
and of our world is solely up to God, without any better engagement from us,
or me.
Our situation is not simply “fallen”, such that only a
divine redeemer may make it better. We
have our own work to do and this is the time to do it…. all of us together. Nor may we embrace the opposite extreme-the
one that imagines that we can transform ourselves and our politics and our
environment by our own cleverness and determination alone.
Our situation is not simply “imperfect”, awaiting only our
better efforts as human beings. It’s
bigger than that. The things that
threaten us are what St. Mark calls “Satan”, and we don’t have the power to
curtail that all by ourselves. Even
Jesus didn’t have the power apart from God.
So where does all this leave us in our embracing this new
season of Lent? Well we could do worse
than to embrace that ancient axiom of The Benedictines in our Catholic
tradition, who knew a thing or two about a balanced spiritual life-as they
still do.
That axiom in Latin, is “Ora Et Labora”, or “worship and
work”. Not prayer alone, not human
effort alone, but both-and.
Perhaps that phrase could help all of us to reflect
personally on how we should spend these next six weeks bringing things in to
better balance.
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