Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. In college seminary on an occasional Friday night my brother seminarians and I would pull out the game of Risk, especially if we knew we had a lot of time and didn’t have to get up early the next morning. I was never particularly good at Risk. I would hold my own for a little while, but usually tried stretching my armies too much, which made them vulnerable to attack, and then other armies would come and wipe them out. I usually liked starting with Australia, but then when I tried to attack different parts of Asia, it wouldn’t work our well for me.
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| St. Paul |
The Apostle writes that God called Abraham and promised prosperity for his seed, which, if only reading the Old Testament, one would think applies to Isaac, but in fact, St. Paul argues, applies to Christ, at least in the fullness of God’s revelation. Now, he acknowledges another covenant, that of the Law, made through the mediator, Moses. But St. Paul writes that the second covenant does not annul the first, the law does not cancel out the promise, because the promise is greater than the law. But all of it is fulfilled in Christ, who fulfills God’s promise and fulfills even the law, so that we might no longer be under the reign of sin, but be heirs of the promise made to Abraham through our union with Christ, the son of Abraham in Christ’s human nature.
We see, then, that God sometimes takes a very long view of things, at least from our finite, temporal reality. Since God is present in all times at once, it’s not a long view, but an eternal present. We know this in salvation: Abraham is commonly thought to have lived around the year 2,000 BC. The law came some four hundred and so years after that. And Christ came around 2,000 years after Abraham. But God, not infringing upon our free will, yet guiding history towards its climax in the Incarnation, sought to bring salvation to the creatures He had made in His image and likeness.
But God doesn’t only work that way with salvation history on the macro scale. He also at times works that way in our lives. Now, we don’t have 2,000 years to wait, but we can be patient with the time that God does allow things to work out in our lives, adjusting and compensating for our free will. For most married couples, we ask them to have a period of nine or so months between their engagement and their wedding date. I know that for couples, this seems like a never-ending time. But this allows them to continue to deepen their relationship, and continue to learn how to sacrifice their own wills for the good of the other.
Or think about the nine months that a mother carries an infant in her womb. Especially in that last trimester, I’ve known many moms who feel like the child is never going to leave her body. But that period of waiting allows the child to develop, little by little, so that, at the appropriate time, the child can experience its life outside of the womb.
For me, as a seminarian, I thought I was never going to make it to ordination. I have 8 years of seminary, and that was the short way (if I would have gone to a secular college, then into seminary, I would have had four years of college, at least, and then two years of philosophy, and then four years of theology, so at least 10 years, if not more). But my time in seminary proved invaluable in teaching me more about prayer, about how the Lord works, about growing in virtue, about what the Church teaches, about how to celebrate the sacraments, about the promise of celibacy made at diaconate ordination, etc. I didn’t always enjoy seminary, but I believe the length helped me to grow in love with the Lord, to get to know Him and His Church better, and to discern if I could live a celibate life.
But the “extended plan,” if you will, is not just about vocation. It also applies in our hopes for our professional or social lives, travel plans, etc. God works with us through our daily lives, even the small choices we make, to try to bring about our salvation with our cooperation. He puts us in some situations that we think we will never make it through, and He saves us from some situations that we think we might want, but which would draw us farther away from Him. We’re not always grateful for those times, but they do give us the opportunity to be the people God wants us to be for our own happiness and salvation.
As country songs are three chords and the truth, there’s a good country song that references this reality: “Unanswered Prayers” by Garth Brooks. In the song, the artist references a girl with whom he was smitten in high school, that he begged God would allow them to get married and spend a lifetime together. But God didn’t answer his prayers the way he wanted. And years later, at a football game with the woman he did marry, as he sees that high school crush again, he realizes that he wouldn’t have been happy marrying his originally-desired woman. And so he thanks God for unanswered prayers, and sings that “just because He may not answer, doesn’t mean He don’t care,” because “some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.”
We can find it difficult to be patient with God’s plans, especially when we don’t think they’re for our good. But God always works for our salvation, and sometimes works out that plan over weeks, months, years, centuries, and even millennia. His strategy is always the best, and I pray that we can all trust in the loving, merciful, and providential will of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.