April 14/Monday of Holy Week
Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD! ~ Ps 27.14
Have you ever thought about how much time you spend waiting? Idling in traffic, biding time in a TSA or grocery store line, checking the status of a college or job application, awaiting the MRI report, or the baby’s arrival, or the wedding day. Waiting is endemic to the human condition: spiritual beings though we may be, we live in time, hearing the clock tick, straining to hear it tock, ever oriented towards what comes next. How, then, might we conduct ourselves given that we are, in a very real sense, trapped in time? We can wait impatiently — fuming, pacing, angry. We can wait idly, twiddling our thumbs and numbing our anxiety with Hulu or Bacardi. We can wait with dread, gripped by a pessimistic belief that all shall not be well. But as the dark rhythms of this week thrum along, inexorably building in ominous intensity as the days go by, towards that horrific day on Calvary’s hill, we might consider facing the uncertainties of the future with hope and trust, as our psalmist counsels us. In Hebrew, the verb qvh, “to wait,” also means “to hope.” As the 20th-century French Jesuit theologian and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote, “We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. . . Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.” On the other side of time lives eternity; on the other side of death lies love. Let us, then, wait in joyful hope, bolstered by trust in God’s promises.
Almighty and eternal God, Give me the grace to wait with strength and courage throughout these dark days. Amen.
For today’s readings, click here: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/041425.cfm
To hear “Wait for the Lord,” recorded at Taizé, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt2ifr8O1pM
