Let us get up then, at long last, for the Scriptures rouse us when they say: “It is high time for us to arise from sleep” Romans 13:11 (Rule of St. Benedict, Prologue.8)
I myself had an experience of a call involving Scripture and a stirring up from physical sleep, on a particular occasion. At about 2 a.m., the morning of June 19, 2012, I woke up with the urgent sense that I should post verses of Scripture online.
So I thought, “I’ll do it tomorrow.”
But the urgency increased. I felt that I must check the readings for the day–not in the Upper Room guide to prayer that I’d been using for twenty-two years, but in the Catholic Missal app, which I had downloaded on my phone at some point but had never even opened before. I fumbled with my phone in the middle of the night and read the Scriptures that showed up: 1 Kings 21: 17-29 (the Lord sends Elijah to confront Ahab). Psalm 51 (“…in the greatness of your compassion wipe out my offense….). Matthew 5: 43-48 (“love your enemies“). There was also a daily Bible verse, Acts 17:30-31:
God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but now he demands that all people everywhere repent, because he has established a day on which he will judge the world with justice through a man he has appointed, and he has provided confirmation for all by raising him from the dead.
There was a “share” button to post this verse on Facebook. It was imperative that I must do so at once. I signed in to my rarely-used Facebook account, and I posted the verse.
This experience had never happened to me before. It hasn’t occurred again since. Afterwards, trying to come to terms with it, I explained to God that this was the wrong message, entrusted to the wrong person, at the wrong cultural moment.
These days, God is not supposed to “demand” anything. God should be grateful if anyone condescends to consider that he might exist. And if God did want to get a message out to all people everywhere, my Facebook (or Substack) page is not the place to do it. Furthermore, people these days don’t repent. A few Catholics make a practice of going to Reconciliation, but the people who do most of the sinning aren’t interested in repentance at all.
There must have been some mistake. The angel tapped the wrong person. I don’t have the credentials, the platform, the authority or the influence.
Years later, I still find it difficult to view my contributions as tilting the scales toward good, against evil. Even to mention such an eventuality strikes me as comical rather than inspiring. It’s easier for me to perceive in others the spiritual stupor that is the perfectly normal condition of nice people who imagine that evil is always necessarily someone else’s problem. There is a clear difference between the sort of people who make an attempt—any attempt—to engage at whatever level is available to them, and, on the other hand, the people whose lives seem to be devoted to various ways of escaping. If the spiritual battle has to do with this fundamental difference in stance, then I do prefer to resemble the former type rather than the latter. But in a society where spectating rather than participating is the default path, and where any sort of action makes you the fumbling, ridiculous spectacle, resolving to be an agent in your own environment at a small level—because smallness is risible—is peculiarly daunting.
But St. Benedict provides some insight into personal calls from God: Seeking his workman in a multitude of people, the Lord calls out to him and lifts his voice again: “Is there anyone here who yearns for life and desires to see good days?” Psalm 34:12 (Rule of St. Benedict, Prologue.14-15)
There’s a promise here, and it’s not just pie in the sky bye ‘n bye. The promise of God for those who will heed him is a good life beginning here and now.
The Lord waits for us daily to translate into action, as we should, his holy teachings. Therefore our life span has been lengthened by way of a truce, that we may amend our misdeeds. As the Apostle says, “Do you not know that the patience of God is leading you to repent?” Romans 2:4 (RB Prologue.35-37)
If we are each called to translate Christ’s teachings into daily action, how do we operate within a culture that has explicitly rejected Christ and that organizes itself along opposing principles?
Therefore we intend to establish a school for the Lord’s service. In drawing up its regulations, we hope to set down nothing harsh, nothing burdensome. The good of all concerned, however, may prompt us to a little strictness in order to amend faults and to safeguard love. (RB Prologue.45-48)
Every household with children is a school: the question is, into whose service are the children being formed? If the home is spiritual chaos, the child may emerge into adulthood unfit for any good purpose. Spiritual discipline costs effort every day, and sometimes it is at odds with the various activities that the world equates with success. But to overlook spiritual discipline costs far more. You pay the price in illness, loneliness, and despair, and your decisions as a parent also play out in the lives of your children. It’s easier to perceive these trajectories in other people’s lives than in my own, but my own life is the only one I can live.
Rather than raging at evil in others elsewhere, let us combat it where we are. The battle for good against evil will be won or lost behind closed doors, without recognition or applause, but the consequences will yield a harvest for good or ill in the lives of those we care about.
