HOPE: FIDELITY TO THE MOMENT (#8)
Today is in our hands but not fully: today is made up of many moments. Only this moment is in our hands. From the perspective of Christian faith, of spiritual/moral life, what is the meaning of “the moment”?
When she was very young, St. Therese of the Child Jesus was worried about the future. After she became a Carmelite nun, she focused her life on the present moment: “I just keep concentrating on the present moment. I forget the past, and preserve myself from worries about the future… Let us see each instant as if there were no other. An instant is a treasure.”
The Zen Master says: “The past is unreal; the future is unreal too; only the moment is real. Life is a series of moments, either lived or lost.” Indeed, life is a series of moments either lived or lost! True freedom entails doing “what the present moment demands, what we owe to ourselves and to our neighbors” (Anselm Grun). For his part, St. Josemaría Escrivá writes in his wonderful The Way: “Now! Go back to your noble life now. Do not let yourself be fooled: ‘now’ is not too soon… nor too late” (Camino 254).
THE MOMENT AND HOPE - Christian hope is rooted in the past, oriented to the future and lived in the present. Theological hope places the past and the future in God’s merciful and provident hands. It concentrates on the “present, on the ‘now,” for God is the eternal now, and talks to us in different ways. When Mary visited her cousin Elizabeth, she was deeply surprised by the visit of the most blessed of all women and said: “The moment your greeting reached my ears, the child in my womb leapt for joy” (Lk 1:43-44).
To be faithful to the moment implies to live the moment in God’s presence. God says to Abraham: “Live in my presence, be perfect” (Gen 17:1). Indeed, the moment for believers is the moment in God’s presence: “What essentially matters is the presence of God in every moment of our life once it becomes oriented towards God, just as the sunflower rotates in the direction of the sun throughout the day” (Y. Congar).
A holy man and mystic who lived every moment in God’s presence was the Carmelite brother Lawrence of the Resurrection (+1691), who left us a marvelous book of spirituality entitled The Practice of the Presence of God. He practiced the presence of God every moment. This practice, which is not easy but possible with perseverance, became a holy habit. He explains: through this holy habit, “we take delight in and become accustomed to God’s divine company, speaking humbly and talking lovingly with him at all times, at every moment, without rule or system and specially at times of temptation, suffering, spiritual aridity, disgust and even unfaithfulness and sin.” The habit of the continuing presence of God is a form of prayer that unites the person with God every moment of life, whether one is praying or working. Every moment permeated by God’s presence is a moment of grace and mercy (Cf. Peter John Cameron, The Classics of Catholic Spirituality).We surrender to God’s Providence every moment, which is called by the Jesuit mystic Jean-Pierre de Caussade (18th Century) “the sacrament of the moment.” In his masterpiece of spirituality Abandonment to Divine Providence (collection of writings from 1729 to 1739), he writes: “Every moment we live through is like an ambassador who declares the will of God”; “Every moment reveals God to us”; “What God arranged for us to experience at each moment is the best and holiest thing that could happen to us.” Therefore, we are advised by the French mystic to “seize what each moment brings and then forget it, eager only to be alert to respond to God and live for him alone”; “Each moment brings a duty which must be faithfully fulfilled.” The path of life to happiness is “to live only for God and the duties of the present moment.”
SPECIAL MOMENTS - Life is indeed a series of moments that form a chain that leads forward. Every moment is important. Some moments, however, possess a special significance, such as, the moment of birth, the moment of commitment – to marriage, to a religious life, to a priestly ordination, to a profession - and the last moment.
There is an essential use of the word moment when referring to life’s beginning and its end. Christians believe in the sacredness of human life and are guided by an ethical principle grounded on Sacred Scriptures and Tradition: Human life must be defended from the moment of conception to natural death. Our life is sacred: God created us; God governs us; God adopted us in Jesus as his children, and destined us to eternal life with him. Our life is sacred and ought to be defended and promoted from its first moment (against abortion) to its last (against suicide, homicide, euthanasia and the death penalty), and in-between its first and last moments: against violence, injustice, insensibility to the sufferings and needs of others, forced poverty, and for a dignified human life for all.
In his book of essays Faith and Spiritual Life, Yves Congar meditates on the intercessory prayer “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” and in particular on the words: “now and at the hour of our death.” What really matters, he explains, is “the vertical relationship of every moment of our life with God our End that makes these moments holy and acceptable to him.” To pray daily, every moment means to be aware of the continuing presence of God and of our own vulnerability and sinfulness.
For Christ, the last moment is “the hour,” the moment of victory, of his triumphant death on the Cross: The Cross of Hope that points to his Resurrection (cf. Jn 2:4, 7:30, 12:27, 17:1). Death is the end of life, but “not in the sense of its conclusion but of its fulfillment; death is the fusion of two lives.” Congar continues: We should not be scared of death; what matters is that this moment is “lived in God’s presence,” as a moment of love and of union with the death of Christ. We ask Mary, Mother of God and our Mother to “pray for us, sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”
THE MOMENT AND LOVE - Besides God’s presence in every moment, our fidelity to the moment is expressed by the following and imitation of Christ – every moment: To follow and imitate Jesus this moment is to love as Jesus loved every moment of his earthly life. St Paul reminds us: “You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep …” Put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 13:11; cf. Ib. 13:12-14).
To be faithful to the moment signifies to do every moment what we ought to do with love; to carry out our daily duties and obligations with love. “God does not look at the grandeur of the work we do, but at the love we put into it” (St. Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle).
What matters most in life, then, is love, a faithful and hopeful love. Truly, as Christians we cannot hope without faith, and hope and faith have little value without charity. Hope is the virtue of the pilgrim; without it, we cannot go on meaningfully. True hope, however, is fidelity to the present, to today, to this moment, which is the only thing we actually possess.
As Christians we love this moment as something given to us by God. With God’s love we give passionate love to others, an enthusiastic and joyful love. We do so, according to Anselm Grun, “when we put in it [in our work] our heart, when we let our love go through it.”
A friend sent me a card with this text on the back: Happy moments? Praise the Lord! / Painful moments? Trust in the Lord! / Peaceful moments? Pray to the Lord! / Every moment? Give thanks to the Lord!
Joyful in hope (Rom 12:12), we walk with steps of love towards the embrace of Jesus the Lord. (FGB).
