ANGST CAN BE A GOOD THING

“You duped me, O LORD, and I let myself be duped;
you were too strong for me, and you triumphed.
All the day I am an object of laughter;
everyone mocks me.

“Whenever I speak, I must cry out,
violence and outrage is my message;
the word of the LORD has brought me
derision and reproach all the day.

“I say to myself, I will not mention him,
I will speak in his name no more.
But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart,
imprisoned in my bones;
I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.”  Jer 20:7-9

“O God, you are my God—it is you I seek!
For you my body yearns; for you my soul thirsts,
In a land parched, lifeless, and without water.”  Psalm 63, 2

This First Reading of Sunday’s Mass presents the dilemma faced by Jeremiah, Jesus and us, their successors. For us, too, there should be a feeling of angst when we come to realize and believe what the voice of our God is speaking at the core of each of us – that it is God who created us and is personally interested in us. The angst comes from realizing that, while we believe that this is true, we also see that we are living among people who are encouraging us to live with them, not in the world God graces us to shape, but in a world that is of their own creation.

FEELING THE ANGST

Can you and I identify with the angst that Jeremiah feels? Do we know deep down inside of us that something is not the way it could or should be? Does it seem to each of us that we are lacking something we know should be present? And, if you or I cannot feel this, why is that so? God seems to have made us with this mechanism that triggers angst when something isn’t right! Perhaps these gnawing feelings are the crosses that, when accepted and carried, will bring us to new life – to an even better life. The angst may be God calling you and me to move beyond where we are. It may be God’s grace trying to lift us up. Let’s not refuse it. Let’s not seek simply superficial means to temporarily take away the angst.

THE DAILY ROUTINE OF A GOD-CENTERED PERSON

I was fortunate to have been strongly encouraged (really forced) as a young religious to adopt a life-long daily routine that would enable me to stay attuned to this inner life with its joys and crosses. (As a religious, this is required by the Rule of the Sisters of Mercy of which I am a member.) The Rule’s routine includes scheduled daily quiet time with God in prayer (when I would try to turn my thinking off), Mass, examination of conscience, at least a half hour of spiritual reading and time in communion with others who also were striving to live in God’s world (and who seemed to me to be having more success at it than I was). I have been living this way for more than sixty years. What a beautiful world it is! I highly recommend it.

So, try to produce a rule of your own. Or, since we humans are not much different that those who lived in the times of Saints Augustine, Basil and Gregory, read their Rules, compare them to the one I use. See if, together with God and some disciples around us, we can help swing ourselves and others into living in God’s world.

And the next time you feel angst, bring it into your Rule Routine and seek God’s help. I hope it brightens our world with God’s light.

Sister Loretta

Saints Basil, Benedict and Augustine were among the first to write about these rules of life. We, in religious communities call them the Holy Rule. My community’s Rule is built on the Augustinian Rule. It was revised in 2011, sent to the Vatican for review and approved by our Archbishop Joseph Tobin who was then the Archbishop Secretary of the Vatican Office for Consecrated Life.