"I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled!
- Luke 12:49
The Saints Heroic
The stories of the saints capture our minds for many reasons, not the least of which is for their zealous love. Their zeal manifests throughout Church history: great bravery under trial and threat of death, heroic displays of devotion, persistent suffering for the glory of God, and undeterred action to build His Kingdom. When I was a child, my parents signed me up for a book series that would come in the mail each month. Every installment would contain colorful pictures and dramatic stories of great saints, both ancient and modern. What most captured my young imagination? The stories of great courage under duress, when a young woman stood her ground against unyielding familial and political opposition, when a young man carried the weight of his brothers in a fight that seemed to all the world would unwinnable. They didn't just speak of their love. They died for it.
As I child, I was enthralled. But maybe, even then, I felt the first slivers of fear and doubt needle my mind:
"These were surely courageous men and women and children. God called them for great things. How can I possibly follow in their footsteps when I am so small and weak, so sinful and inconstant?"
What the Desert Fathers Knew
St. Anthony the Great (from St. Anthony Monastery, Perth in Ontario, Canada)
As counterintuitive as it sounds, the source of zeal may, in fact, flow from steady, persistent, contemplative prayer: a sort of holy flame kindled in the silent, slow crucible of mysticism.
To better understand this idea, I've turned to a category of saints different from the martyrs and "fighters" that remain etched so prominently in my mind from those children's books: the Desert Fathers. One example is St. Anthony of Egypt (251 - 356 AD). After listening to a homily on St. Mathew's gospel, he was moved to sell everything he had and donate his wealth to the poor. And this young man had a lot -- he recently inherited a lavish familial estate. He moved to the outskirts of his town to live a simple life of prayer in the African desert. How radical this was, even in those times! How hard it is for me to give up and clear away even the small things that crowd out the space God wishes to have for Himself, to give His Spirit the chance to speak to me, to guide me, to lead me.
The Desert Fathers were on to something. Jesus himself left the world for a time to pray and fast in the desert before fulfilling his mission. Now, we may be physically distant from any truly arid, isolated locales. And maybe we don't have the survival skills to live in the wild eating "honey and insects" for 40 days. But God has a plan for you and me and a mission for us to fulfill. Out of His unending, patient, overflowing love, He may instead send us "deserts" at various points in our lives. The hunger or poverty or sickness or loss or isolation -- these are deserts. But they're not akin to Ironman Triathlons, endurance trials that somehow "prove" our love for God or simply "test" our faith. No. A desert sent by the most Holy One is a gift. And all of His gifts are good -- and ultimately for our greatest good.
But Then, Face-to-Face
And what is the purpose, the goodwill behind God periodically dropping deserts into our lives? First, as the bare landscape and deprivation that dry, seemingly lifeless regions evoke, deserts are about repenting and pruning, stripping away as much as we can to give the Holy Spirit even more room to make His home in us, to give God even more opportunity to accomplish His will through our lives. We are but simple creatures who are yet still His hands and feet on this earth.
But there's more.
To see God's blessing in the desert we turn again to Mary, and specifically, that night when our Savior came forth from her womb and changed the very fabric of the Universe--permanently.
The 3rd Joyful Mystery: The Nativity
". . . Who was born to thee, O Virgin."
It is the hour of the Holy Night. The divine child Jesus comes forth into the outer world, becomes our brother, and takes upon Himself the lot of the Redeemer . . . (A)nd the glorification of that joyous happening will never be muted on this earth.
At the same hour, something happened that concerned Mary alone: in her own personal being, in her spirit and heart, Christ moved into the open expanse of her perception and love; the attitude of expectation became a communion face-to-face. Unutterable truth -- she saw Him who was the manifestation of the living God! As her heart overflowed, a flaming flood rushed toward Him who came with the love of the Redeemer. Serving Him in His tender years, she served the Lord who had revealed Himself in human weakness.
This takes spiritually in every Christian as often as that inner life which divined by faith steps into the clarity of knowledge, into the distinctness of action, and into the decisiveness of testimony. In every one of us, Christ is born as often as He penetrates, as essence and standard, into any deed or happening. One day this happens with particular significance: namely, on that day when it dawns on us, clear and strong, who Christ is, so that He becomes the governing reality of our inner lives.
Fr. Romano Guardini
The Rosary of Our Lady
Zeal from Friendship
Like so much in the Christian faith, zeal doesn't necessarily come from striving to be something. Zeal comes from trusting in the one person who knew and loved us from before the beginning of time. He placed a certain kind of desire in our hearts with the full knowledge that only He Himself can meet that desire--and satisfy it. Knowing Jesus gives us a type of peace beyond what the world could ever offer, beyond whatever I could achieve through heroic acts of self-discipline or even the repeated practice of meditation and detachment from the world.
His love sets me free. Free to love in a way that imitates the reckless, patient love that defines God. He helps me remember that I'm fearfully made, that I share in the dignity of the life of God. I matter to Him. He proved it on the cross. Therefore, everything I do becomes infused with cosmic significance. In my thoughts and in my words, in what I do or fail to do -- I choose either to serve the Master and King of the Universe or I choose to serve myself. Only one of those two paths leads to life and life in abundance.
Tabernacle, Main Chapel, Inn at St. John's (Plymouth, MI)
Read this passage from the end of the next chapter in Luke's Gospel (Jesus's "Lament over Jerusalem"), but in your mind imagine Jesus speaks his lament directly to you and not just the Jewish people:
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how many times I yearned to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were unwilling!
Behold, your house will be abandoned. [But] I tell you, you will not see me until [the time comes when] you say, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord."
Luke 13:34-35
