One of Father Colin’s comments about training the novices his aim would be facilitate a taste for God. Once you taste God the rest would take care for itself. This requires great trust to facilitate. To taste God has permeated the sacrament of confession.
Father Van Howett was a missionary of the Solomon Islands. He was at St Patricks Church Hill for 50 years as a priest. Once it was my turn for confession I knocked on the door and Van responded “yes”. I said “it is my turn”. “No you not”. I went back and checked the schedule and he was right. He had a 2 hour slot. But after he spent 50 years here, Much of it was administrating through the sacrament of reconciliation, a reporter from the Sydney Morning Herald said to him, “I suppose you have heard many mortal sins over the 50 years”. Van looked at him and said “I have never heard a single one”.
Its aim (Confession) was providing the possibility for tasting the love of God. You have to be more available to taste. Tasting God was a key part of Colin. That was the motivation. Not moral performance. Emphasis on God. Knowing that God loves me. To act in ways to make me more and more available and to know that. I can feel that in my tummy.
Think for yourself. What is your response when you know that you are loved? It goes only one way. You don’t want to be violent, hatful and resentful. You want to respond in like kind.
Another quote
T.S Eliot - “I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So, the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
I read that very slowly a few times. In the essence was the first line “I said to me soul be still and wait”. That implies a certain having to empty oneself. In that very emptying in the expectation that hope arises from allowing the emptiness to enter my soul and being.
Where is the centre of gravity when you are waiting?
In your ego? Suppose you are in a hospital and someone you love is very sick. Where is the centre of gravity in your life? That other person. It is beyond yourself. It takes you out of yourself. By the same token you can twist it and through you into yourself. You can become very self-absorbed. What might prompt self-absorption rather than self-transcendence? What is it about waiting that can stress us and can throw us? Not knowing. Fear. No control. In waiting you are powerless.
If someone is important according to social status, wants to emphasize their importance. Making you wait. If you want to control someone, you make them wait. In teaching, you can use waiting as a manipulative tool. So often life leaves us in a position of waiting. Waiting reminds us we are not in control. If you were in control you certainly wouldn’t wait, would you?
In a fast-moving society of microwave ovens and jets we want to all happen (quickly). When you come down to what matters most you can’t make it happen. It behoves us to be conscious. Part of the human vocation is to wait. To wait graciously. To wait creatively.
But God often we are waiting on God. “Waiting on” is an interesting expression. But another expression you might have used “Waiting for”. Feel the difference between those two.
Bring it back to something simple. A child is sick. You are waiting “for them” to get better. You wait “on them”. Very different aren’t they.
If you dislocate the waiting. Take out the waiting. Remove the “on” and use “for”. What happens to your presence? What is your relationship with the sick person?
You hear the needs of that other person…
That’s if you are waiting “on them”.
Waiting for throws you into a future moment that does not exist. The “waiting on” throws you into the now. “Waiting on” helps you to be present.
Day 5 - Activity
Listen to the audio by clicking the play button above.
Discuss the following:
What does it mean to taste God?
What are people tasting?
What is the difference between "Waiting for", "waiting on" and "waiting with"? How does this change what we do?
