This saying is hard

When we make statements such as: “This is too much”, “I’m overwhelmed”, or “This is hard”, we are in danger of giving up on life or on someone we love. In such a situation, what allows us to go beyond the hard and difficult aspects of life? Every reading gives us a unique expression of the same solution: commitment. Each suggests an approach that can help us embrace this elusive virtue.

The first reading recounts the moment in which the Israelites entered into the promised land and Joshua gave the people an opportunity to choose between the god of the natives or the God of their fathers. They chose the latter along with Joshua: “we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God” (Jos 24:18b). What helped the Israelites to recommit themselves was their ability to remember with gratitude. In the forty years of divine accompaniment through the desert, the Israelites came up with numerous reasons to complain to God and their leaders. One of these times, the level of discontent and murmuring reached such a degree that in his desperation, Moses begged God, “Please do me the favor of killing me at once” (Num 11:15). Too often, human nature tends to remember the negative more than the good, yet before recommitting themselves to God, the Israelites recalled the many blessings they received, “He performed those great miracles before our very eyes and protected us along our entire journey and among the peoples through whom we passed” (Jos 24:17). Remembrance in gratitude is often a beautiful and healing exercise at funerals, but it does not need to be confined to funeral parlors.

In the second reading, Paul exhorts Ephesian couples to commit themselves to love one another “as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her” (Eph 5:2). Although hotly debated, Paul’s counsel that wives should be subordinate to their husbands, communicate an essential truth about authentic love: it demands a union of wills. If we are attached to our own wills and unwilling to concede, it is not genuine love, but selfish love. Even Benedict exhorts the monastic toward authentic love in numerous passages of his Rule: calling self-centered monks as sarabaites (cf. rb 2:6); listing the second step of humility as “love not your own will” (rb 7:31); and encouraging the brothers to the good zeal in which “no one is to pursue what he judges better for himself, but instead, what he judges better for someone else” ( rb 72:7). Authentic love, whether in monastery or in marriage, demands a dying to oneself in imitation of the one who loved us to the end (cf. Jn 13:1).

In the Gospel, Jesus commits to his disciples by offering himself: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you” (Jn 6:53). This invitation proves to be too much and too direct. Encountering a love that holds nothing back is in fact a frightful proposition; one that caused many of his disciples to leave and return to a way of life that does not demand radical change. The murmuring disciples were right. This saying is hard because commitment is hard, authentic love is hard.

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, “Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?” Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, “If you will, you can become all flame” (Abba Joseph, Saying 7).

Jesus desires to set the world on fire (cf. Lk 12:49) and invites us to consume and be consumed by His love.

*  Abbot of St. Martin Abbey
Lacey, Washington

By Fr Marion Nguyen, osb *