THE GIFT OF WHY
What we do can be less important than why we do it.
Why, indeed? What kind of ministry leaves to others—or, tragically, to no one—the needs of God’s people, the sick and hungry and abandoned? Anyone must realize that to be a Christian, as to be any kind of responsible human being, demands service to one’s fellows.
I suppose that in one sense, we minister to the ministers. The world can be harsh, the care of God’s people can wear the skin off one’s spiritual shoulders. Classroom, family, trade and profession can leave one drained and numb. When the battered nervous system wonders how to recover its energy, let alone its peace, our friends and neighbors think of the monastery. Our retreat house, our liturgy and landscape, an encounter with the quiet monastic environment can slow spinning inner wheels, heal and restore noise-damaged hearts.
But more than that, when we enter the life of God in Baptism, we enter the whole Christ and share the life of every member of his sacrificed and risen life. The sisters pray the psalms from the longing and needy hearts of all the people of the world with whom we are united.
The visible search for God, when it is not involved in hands-on service, proclaims the supreme value of the human person. It’s not what we do, it’s what we are that counts. However useless a human life may seem, it is sublimely important. As we open ourselves to the working of the Spirit of Christ in a life-style that is demanding of complete openness to the dark and light of the human journey, our silent witness speaks for the severely disabled, the helpless, and those for whom God is about to open the doors of eternity. We live—usually in the dark—on that doorstep, at one with the mystery of uselessness that can afflict so many of our brothers and sisters.
We believe that on every step of that journey, we take with us the world in whose depths we have chosen to be embraced, world without end.