My parents were the age I am now when my younger brother was paralyzed in an automobile accident more than 25 years ago. Sometimes we are given the grace to see our particular Calvary looming on the horizon; other times, as it did for my family, it crashes into us without warning on a cold December morning.
There is much about that time that I have blocked-out and forgotten; some things I was still too self-centered to absorb appropriately in my early 20s. And yet, we were as a family forever changed by this one moment, a moment in which both swords of sorrow and lights in the darkness arose for us on our journey of faith and life.
What strikes me most powerfully about those first months after Brian’s accident is all the waiting that comes with sickness, illness and hospitals: prepping for surgery; praying for longed-for miracles; needing to see a doctor when none can be found; hoping that today will be better, less painful.
The waiting can be – and often is -- quite the Cross.
How I have come to love both Simeon and Anna in this Presentation story, for they have become the unsung heroes for all those called to wait with grace and in a spirit of hopefulness.
For decades, they waited: two humbly-silent elderly people whom the rest of the world often overlooked. The hidden elderly among us whom we avoid, often out of fear of so many things: growing older; losing independence and our youthful looks; death. How many worshippers would pass them in the Temple, day after day, with nary a glance in their direction? How many chose to pity them instead of engage them? How many failed to even see them as fellow seekers of God on the journey?
Luke’s Gospel is crystal clear: there are Annas and Simeons all around us, even now. Am I willing to encounter them? Am I ready to wait with them?
These two holy souls searched, of course, for the in-breaking of God, the longed-for Savior who was promised to the House of Israel and to the world for all time. Simeon and Anna waited with a mixture of both holy longing and no doubt a very messy human patience.
Waiting is hard. We all know it.
And yet, waiting can be one of God’s greatest teachers for many reasons, three of which stand-out on this great Feast of Light.
Firstly, waiting purifies us and opens us up to deeper, more genuine prayer.
So often as a priest, I sit alongside so many who wait on God for prayers to be answered. They always are, but often not in the way or time we would hope for. The job search that seems to go on for months; the wrestling with whether or not to break the engagement; the often-agonizing decision to make application to a seminary or religious community: all involve prayer and waiting on the Lord for answers. Sometimes God seems so silent, especially in the waiting. Sometimes God says “not yet.” Quite often, in fact, God says “no, it will not lead you to Me.”
It would have been easy for Simeon or Anna – or both – to eventually give-up on that prayer of hopeful expectation. How many times have we prayed for something and been met with roadblocks? How often have we cried out, heard nothing – saw no change – and then been tempted to give-up and walk away?
No matter what, never give-up on dialogue with God. No matter how dry or empty it seems, it will always lead to deeper love and authentic transformation.
A woman whom I have journeyed with for years now carries the cross of severe mental illness. She has spent weeks in hospital psych-wards; she has attempted to take her life on numerous occasions; she has been abandoned by family and shunned by neighbors who live in her tenement apartment hallway. She is not easy to love; there is no other way to say it. There are times, in fact, where I sit in my car for twenty minutes working up the nerve just to go see her, and when I do, I am almost always met with vile words of hate for being late, followed by an agonizing cry from the depths of this woman’s soul: “Why won’t He fix me? Why won’t He answer me?”
I ask the same question. The Eucharist I bring; the anointings I administer – the Sacramental presence of God breaking in – and still no observable change in this woman’s life and mind and heart. She continues to wait in agony and in a constant state of suffering.
And yet, there’s a truth that can’t be overlooked here, too. In the waiting that often involves suffering, we share in the salvific work of Christ. From the Cross, He invites us to share in His redeeming love.
I will never understand it this side of heaven – and I wonder if I will even fully understand on the other side one day, God-willing – but the truth of waiting-suffering love is this: He wants to use whatever our own Cross may be to save souls, both our own and others. He need not do so, of course – His sacrificial death and resurrection saved us all for all time – but in the mysterious ways of Trinitarian Love, Christ invites us to share in His Cross for the sanctification of others. In a word, He uses our offered pain and our own agonies in the garden of life to rescue others from hell, the ones we create for ourselves and the one that awaits souls that refuse God’s Mercy.
So, my brother’s years of struggle that comes with paralysis; the woman who is not set free from her frequent schizophrenic episodes; the 4-year-old at the children’s hospital undergoing painful cancer treatments: all are sharing in the redemptive love of the Crucified Christ who is using their crosses to rescue His beloved daughters and sons and all creation. Our waiting-suffering becomes a gift for others.
And it becomes a gift for ourselves, too – the third component of a Christ-like suffering that waits on the Lord.
What I have begun to understand from those whom I serve and love who have allowed the Cross of waiting-suffering to purify their own hearts is this: it allows them to really see the God who is at work in others who suffer and cry-out.
I think of sweet elderly Anna who spent her days and nights in that Temple, often overlooked and avoided. A woman in love who lost her husband at a young age could have become bitter and walked away from her faith. Instead, she kept showing up – with all the messiness that comes from grieving – and her broken heart was transformed by God in such a way that she was able to take on and pray for the countless others who swirled around her in that Temple, offering her pain for their pain. In so doing, she found Christ.
So, too, Simeon: this righteous man filled with the Spirit, who allowed his own sufferings in life to be used and transformed, was able to recognize the Light of God the moment another humble and hidden young couple entered the Temple with their infant son. The suffering Simeon – refined with the Refiner’s Fire through a lifetime of prayerful-waiting -- allowed the Spirit to shatter the darkness around him in order to see Love breaking in.
I suspect from that moment-on, Anna and Simeon were able to see that Christ-like in others, too. Transformed crosses given to God in love allow us to see the pierced hearts that others carry deep within their own lives, as Mary – and no doubt Joseph – did.
Pierced hearts set ablaze with the fire of God’s transforming love often see and then set other suffering hearts on fire, too.
It isn’t easy, and some days are harder than others to remember the power of suffering-waiting love. But when it is present, it is so beautiful to witness it in action.
I watch now – 26-years later -- how my brother and my parents have been transformed by the Cross they’ve carried: the ways in which they bring their own light and patient understanding to others who suffer or who work with those that do.
Even my friend whom I struggle to love each time I visit her in the throes of her depression and mental illness: a nurse who stops by weekly to check her vitals once shared with me this passing comment that forever changed my heart when it comes to embracing the messiness of this woman’s life: “Each time she enters the hospital, once she rests and calms her mind and heart, she will go from room to room on her floor and make sure everyone else is okay. She’s no longer focused on herself. She always introduces herself by saying: “You’ll be okay; I’m here for you.”
Suffering-waiting hearts often are the ones who recognize and bring the Light of Love to the ones most in need.