A priest who served a small town parish found himself going blind due to a congenital disease. As he was preparing for his new life as a blind person memorized the layout of the streets in the town, making Main Street his anchor for navigation. As his sight deteriorated and soon disappeared, he walked each road of the town, constantly navigating back to Main Street before turning toward the parish rectory. One day, he got turned around. He knew how to make his way to the main street, so he walked to it and sat down, knowing someone from the parish would find him. Sure enough, a parishioner passed by and gave him a drive back to the rectory. He thanked the parishioner for finding him. Then the parishioner asked him how he had known how to make his way to Main Street. The priest told him of his practice of memorizing the town as he was going blind. “But, why Main Street?” the parishioner asked. The priest reminded him that everybody in town must drive down the main street to get where they are going. And then he added, “When you are lost, put yourself in a place where you can be found.”
I have never been so lost that I couldn’t be found (we never are), but I certainly have felt that way from time to time over my life. And, like the priest, I want to always be in a place where I can be found! Like Zaccheus, who wanted to see Jesus but couldn’t see over the crowd because he was vertically challenged, I sometimes needed to climb a tree to be found. The hard part is to sit and wait for Jesus. An Ignatian Spirituality principle about the discernment of spirits helps me to remain “seated” as I wait to be found, or I should say, as I wait for the Lord’s consolation. Life just happens, does it not? We are perennially in a state of consolation, tranquility, or desolation; and sometimes life just drives us up a tree; pun intended. We have seasons when our spirit is tranquil and still in the hands of our LORD, but then something comes along to disturb our peace, and it can make us feel discontent, doubt, or fear settling in around the edges of our mind. I believe the LORD allows those times to come to help us relearn that he is always with us despite how we feel. Usually, we can recognize that it’s simply another opportunity to entrust ourselves to the LORD. Normally. But then there are those times when discontentment, doubt, or fear move into our hearts and begin to nag us into looking for love in all the wrong places.
Saint Ignatius of Loyola refers to those seasons of our life as “desolation.” It may start with a bit of melancholy or feelings of isolation tiptoeing their way into our thoughts or a dramatic life event that assaults us. Either way, we risk losing sight of the LORD’s abiding love for us if we try to avoid the season by distracting ourselves from the LORD’s love. It is then that we need to take the blind priest’s advice and place ourselves in a place where we can be found.
He cautions that we should never make decisions when in desolation; in other words, we are to remain in the LORD’s hands as he carries us through the unwelcomed season back to the tranquil rest that is ours when we wait for the LORD. When we continue to do what we know to do in our relationship with the LORD–worship, prayer, reading the Sacred Scriptures–we are placing ourselves in a place we can be found. And just as Jesus did for Zacchaeus, he will do for us even though we cannot see the forest for the trees, another pun intended!
I believe I know why Ash Wednesday is the third most attended mass of the Liturgical year; we all share the knowledge that our physical lives are just dust after all. St. James writes:
What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
Yet we all know or at least hope to know that when we place ourselves in the place where we can be found, Jesus comes to us with his abundant life as he did to Zaccheaus. And like Zaccheaus, we know that when we repent of whatever got us lost in the first place, a season of refreshing will come. That’s another way to look at Lent’s meaning- a time of renewal and refreshment.
Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah appointed for you, that is, Jesus…
“Acts 3:19,20
Do you ever doubt God will come through for you? Do you long for contentment that isn’t rattled by your circumstances? Do you struggle with feelings of doubt and discontent? The malignant enemy of our soul nags us with feelings of shame and regret, discontentment and doubt. Yet our loving Lord Jesus has his eyes fixed on us, waiting for us to place ourselves where we can be found.
LORD Jesus Christ, there are so many ways we get ourselves lost. You know them all, don’t you? There is one way to be found, and you are the One who sees us. Teach us how to place ourselves where we can be found momentarily as we make this Lenten journey together.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen
The Maiden Warrior 