THE ART OF WAITING FOR CHRIST: The God whisperer

As early as last year, I can remember my Lectio Divina experiences as deepening into something over which I do not control. Before that time, I selected a set time for Lectio (which I still do) and followed the four (five) step method of lectio, meditatio, oratio, contemplatio (and actio). As I have grown deeper (capacitas dei) into the profundity of each of these practices, I find neverending nuances of how I can be in the presence of Christ and what happens to me.

Unless I am missing the mark, I have moved from my controlling Lectio Divina to that of waiting for Christ through the Holy Spirit to lead me. In this sense, I have to die to myself to move ever deeper, going where I would have never thought I could go in my relationship with the Real Presence.

Humans get nervous when we pray. We use set prayers, even spontaneous ones, to pray, forgetting that all this is initiated by humans. Waiting for something to happen over which we have no control is not a human strong suit. We must DO something to be human and productive; otherwise, life is a waste of time.

I seem to have moved to a place in my Lectio where I don’t worry about those steps in the methodology. Now, I just sit on my couch in the upper room of my inner self and wait. The art of waiting for Christ comes when I continuously meld all the steps into one and just wait. Erich Fromm gave me a clue about the meaning of waiting when we wrote the book, The Art of Loving. He said that humans are not born knowing how to love. We assimilate that from those around us, their values, our needs, and how the societal norms have applied to what is meaningful. I think the same holds true for waiting. When I first began my Lay Cistercian journey (about 2010), I could not even discover where my inner room was. I had no patience to wait for anything, thinking that prayer was what I said and that the more I said, the more I prayed. As I grew in capacitas dei (more of Christ and less of me), I gradually let go of my wanting to be in control of God and how God would reveal to me the Divine Wind of energy.

Now, more and more, as the inspiration of St. Charles de Foucauld points out, I must abandon everything human about my surroundings to move to that next step in my evolution, being and sustaining an adopted son (daughter) of the Father. Just wait. The most difficult test of my spirituality. That is why I have not approached contemplation without all the baggage I carry. Waiting is getting rid of the baggage. Waiting is continuously seeking to be open to the presence of Christ through the energy of the Holy Spirit. Not in the future, but right now. Waiting is an art that takes mastery. The problem with mastery in this life is that we can only place ourselves in the presence of God and seek God each day as we are. I can’t master what I can only approach with the help of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.

My behaviors these days reflect what is in my heart. When I go to Liturgy of the Hours, I wait for God to be my dance partner and take the lead. Jesus is the Lord of the Dance. I follow His lead and can only do that if I subjugate my will to the Lord of the Dance.

I sit in silence and solitude in the presence of the Eucharist and Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, keeping my head and eyes lowered (custos oculi) and seeking only to do God’s will. Fear of the Lord is necessary for waiting in the presence of the Sacred, Benedict in RB 7:10, and I must remind myself of it over and over and over. That is conversio morae, what happens in my heart (and yours) when we obey the laws of nature and nature’s God.

Waiting means that if I choose my way, my truth, and my life, all my choices will be correct since I am the one who made them. Waiting means being in the presence of Christ and His heart next to my heart, my nature (human) becomes what I choose as my center, according to my capacity to receive it. The disposition of waiting for Christ means, “Your kingdom come, you will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Waiting means I am not seduced by the temptations to sidetrack my faith with this or that word the Pope said or whether the Pope is right or wrong. Forget all the Pope stuff. The Catholic Church is not my center and I will betray my Faith if I place my trust in the Pope, the Church, and the trappings and fringes of discipline. (celibacy, women priests, …etc.) I am not saying that these are not issues that challenge us, I am saying that to put Mary, the Pope, the Church, the Saints, or any way to interpret Scriptures at my center is not going to get me to heaven and fulfill my destiny as an adopted son (daughter) of the Father.

Mary is the Mother of God, not that she is the birth mother of God or is even divine. She is the first human to hear the heartbeat of Christ within her; she waited all this time he was alive, knowing what would follow, that her son was more than mere human, that he must be about his Father’s business. So what did she tell us? “Do what he tells you.”

Waiting in my upper room, in the silence and solitude of my heart, in the stillness of the Presence of Christ, I wait because only then can I hear the whispers from the pure energy of God. The language of God is not science, philosophy, or literature, but how all those authors in the Old Testament and New Testament, all the writers of early Christianity, and all those who have waited for the Lord have written down so that we might learn. The language of God is not theology nor fanciful theories about how humans can go to heaven if they do this or that. The language of God is silence, manifested by the personification of knowledge, love, and service (energy).

I try to wait as Mrs. Murphy did, the fictional avatar of the late Aidan Kavanaugh who taught me in Sacrament Theology class that Mrs. Murphy sits alone in the back bench of Church and gazes upon the Liturgical reenactment of the Incarnation, Baptism, Miracles, Transfiguration, Passion, Death and Resurrection of reality in the act of Christ going to the Father (with us tagging along) to give all honor, power and glory, as only God can do. The transformation is in the heart of Mrs. Murphy, who just waits for the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. There are no demands, no agendas, and no expectations. “Be it done to me, according to your Word,” is the outcome, not the requirement for God to sit next to Mrs. Murphy.

The whispers from God are the loudest sounds in the universe of universes. Waiting is the subjection of our human nature to the will of God and the longing to be sitting next to the heart of Christ in that upper room and match my heartbeat to His…forever.

Lay Cistercian practices and charisms, taken as they are from Cistercian spirituality, allow me to sit in the presence of God while doing Eucharist, Lectio Divina, the Rosary, Biblical Reading, Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, Sacrament of Reconciliation (making all things new) and Contemplation. Waiting is indeed an art that demands an ever deeper awareness from me to penetrate the veil of my own false self to rise with Christ each day.

Waiting for Gadot is a play where people wait for Gadot to show up, but he never does. Waiting for Christ is a daily part of existence where it takes practice and effort to wait, but the object of that waiting is the realizing that Christ has been waiting for you from before time and matter. How blessed we are to have the opportunity to wait for the Lord all the days of our lives.

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