Father Gerald Vann has been a penetratingly insightful spiritual guide during a bit of a tumultuous time, a time of great worldly change.  The reading of St Paul during mass also alights with relevancy.  I have been putting a lot of stress upon myself regarding work and the Hospice, demanding upon myself at a time I am confident God simply asks for my attention.  Perseverance, humility, and acceptance are all He ask as I settle into a demanding employment position, and while my time of Hospice activity approaches.  It is a life lesson for myself that where there are no serious problems, life basically a challenge, solutions and peace do not arise within dramatics, imaginary perfection, and reasoning.  The dependence upon faith, hope, and charity is applied to my worldly life, as well as my spiritual.  Malleability, a passive mindset allowing God to lead—while strong and independent as an individual—a purposeful man, one who is willing to present solutions to others, while seeking no attention, accolades, or causing complications become my approach to worldly situations.  I am not a man with an agenda, the ever-present need for personal justification, rather a human being caring and trying his best.  Yet deeper than this, for I am satisfied with my worldly exterior life—the perception and treatment of others, my self-esteem and internal coping, my disposition, possesses the peace and tranquility God desires.  I accept myself.  I am not consumed by anxiety.  Interiorly, within my core being, all that is me including my subconscious, I accept, trusting in God, coping with the complexities of life, allowing my humanity to heal and serve as a loving example of the presence of God.  I have been listening to Father Thomas Keating, a Trappist proponent of centering prayer, praising the wonders of AA, remarking that in one regard if you are human you will become an addict.  The presence of God within every human being is such an overwhelming reality, a demand and need calling forth such immense love, that a human being will become addicted to something as a consequence.  It is inevitable.  We must satisfy our condition of being human.  Anyway, let’s allow Father Gerald Vann a voice in regards to dealing with times of difficulty, the times when God is not easily understood.  He powerfully relates times of worldly trouble to the flight to Egypt by the holy family, a process in which defensive action, interior strengthening, is necessary.  However most important through example, the time of interior strengthening is accomplished in order to return to the world, fortifying being human in order to return to humanity.  The flight into Egypt precedes a return to the holy land and humanity for the holy family.  I see my new employer and Hospice volunteer work as the exercising of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth steps: my return from Egypt.  No one ever said it would be easy.  No one ever said it would be so hard.  I remember reading once, I believe Teresa of Avila wrote it, that no matter how far we advance in the spiritual life, we will always feel like beginners, that we are continuously starting over.  Lets go back to the start in order to get to the end.

Here then (troubled times), especially, we need to be prepared; but it is a preparation which must necessarily be a long process (St Francis de Sales spiritual direction—patience essential).  We shall not become poor in spirit suddenly, when danger most acutely threatens.  It is when God’s yoke seems light and His presence near that we need to school ourselves to meet the darkness; and to school ourselves, not by occasional dramatic renunciations but by constant daily attention to His will in tiny things “Seek ye first the kingdom of Heaven”: if at every moment, we consult His will for us, if when life’s gracious things come to us, we refer them back to Him in gratitude and love, and when difficulties arise, we turn to Him also in obedience and love, then we are learning how to see the material world as His world and not ours, and material things as His gifts and not our creatures.  And so we can hope to be able to obey, even though it must be done instantly, even though it must be in darkness, when the times comes for us to flee into Egypt in our turn. 

But when Herod was dead…again appeared an angel to Joseph in Egypt, saying “Arise, and take the Child and His mother and go into the land of Israel, for they are dead that sought the life of the Child.”  There is a striking parallelism of circumstance.  Again it is night, and Joseph asleep, and the words are almost identical, so that the similarity underlines the contrast: no longer a question of a flight, but of a glad return, and the reason given: they are dead that sough the life of the child.

Those who have learned how to love the harshness as well as the tenderness of Love, to greet with gratitude the buffetings of God, come in the end to a state in which poverty of spirit is perfect in them, and greed and possessiveness are dead in them: they are dead that sought the life of the child in them, the newborn of God, and so they are free to return.  They are free to return to the world to love the world, to gather all God’s creatures into the embrace of their love, because God’s creatures can no longer endanger their love of God; they can only help express it.

The return of the holy family from the flight to Egypt.