Many ancient myths are about the individual journey of a hero following a “call,” with all the anxieties, fears, trials, tribulations and often tragedies of accepting that call.
Today’s Psalm poetically expresses God’s call to us to bring forth our courage and follow His way. It’s God’s promise that he, “will show us the path of life”. And taking that path, “we will find abundant joy and delight”.
Getting up the courage to say “yes” to the adventure of God’s call is usually the first step. We can make that commitment at any time. But most of us have to keep making it over and over again due to the challenges we face throughout life. By saying yes, we choose to take up a heroic journey in life with all the accompanying fears and doubts.
Recently deceased Father John Catoir, Director of the Christophers, often reminded us, “The Holy Spirit moves us in directions we may not have chosen for ourselves”. By saying yes, we have faith in God’s promise and choose to follow His direction.
The opening of Luke’s Gospel finds Cleophas and his companion disheartened on their Sunday walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus. Full of sadness and resignation in the crucifixion of Jesus, compounded by knowing that his dead body was missing, they made a quick exit. Never knowing, shortly thereafter, that angels appeared to the women at the tomb announcing Jesus had risen from the dead as he promised he would.
Bewildered and confused, faith shaken, Cleophas and his companion don’t recognize it is Jesus appearing alongside them during their walk. They tell the “stranger” all about the greatness of the dead Jesus. Generously, they have Jesus join them for dinner and it is then, with His blessing of the bread they realize it is Jesus, resurrected from the dead fulfilling his promise.
How quickly do we give up our belief in something we are passionate about when the vision appears to have come crashing down? Often, the giving up is due to incomplete knowledge, things that we don’t know or haven’t been revealed to us yet. Like Cleophas and his companion unaware of the angels announcing Jesus’ resurrection. Acknowledging that we will never have complete knowledge is difficult in our age of science and its primacy.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, writing a century and a half ago about the battle between faith and the “new ideas”, science and skepticism, expressed unyielding faith beautifully in his novel, The Brothers Karamazov. When ridiculed and derided by a cynical friend, the brother Alyosha responds, “I believed, I believe, and I intend to go on believing, so what more do you want?”