(The Nationalist, 16 December 2005)
Maybe it’s only once in a lifetime, but it happens to everyone sooner or later. We come to a turning point, and we ask ourselves where we should go, what we should do. There are many situations where this might happen. It could be a decision about a marriage – entering it or leaving it. It might be an opportunity of making a fast buck by dishonest means, and we have to make a decision one way or the other. It could happen that the turning point might not be of our own choosing – redundancy, cancer, the death of a loved one.
These are situations which challenge us, which test what we are made of. Perhaps the largest and most necessary part of the challenge is to see it clearly in the first instance, to be able to recognize what’s going on. We may fail to see the wood for the trees. We may live in denial, looking everywhere but at what’s staring us in the face. We may choose beguiling words to cloak reality. We may postpone. We may buoy ourselves up with unfounded hopes. The methods and means of evasion are legion.
The matter may be even more difficult. We may not understand what’s happening – a son commits suicide, a daughter takes to drugs, becoming aggressive and abusive, and we have no idea why. Or we may be asked to do what we feel is beyond us, like caring for someone chronically ill and full of self-pity.
But there are reserves of strength and courage in the human spirit which are literally beyond our imagining, and remain dormant until the need arises. The most unlikely people can surprise everyone, most of all themselves, by doing the seemingly impossible, and growing enormously by doing it.
There’s a story in the Gospel about a young woman who found herself in an impossible situation. She was afraid, and didn’t understand what was being asked of her. God’s message to her was, ‘Do not be afraid’. She raised the obvious question, ‘How can I do the impossible?’ The answer was, ‘Nothing is impossible to God’. She didn’t understand, but she trusted, and replied, ‘Let it be done to me according to your word’. She could have said no. By saying yes to God she became the mother of Christ the Saviour. Her name was Mary.
For those in a hurry: ‘One who truly prays is a theologian and a theologian is one who truly prays’. (Evagrius of Pontus)