Vigil of Feast of St. Benedict

The Gospel from Matthew has the apostle’s spokesperson Peter saying to Jesus, “We have left everything and followed you.  What then will we have?”  This is similar to what we hear said today:  “What’s in it for us?”

These past months we feel like we may have left everything. We have left behind Sundays without the Eucharistic liturgy, time away with family and friends, classrooms and students, vacation time, shopping, visiting others in person, or stopping at a store to browse and going to the Library.  Others gave up going to work, to the park, to volunteer or serving others at the food pantry.

We’ve also given up our freedoms of movement, freedoms we have probably taken for granted for years on end. Others had to leave jobs, food security, paychecks, rent payments, and medical help behind.   

At the monastery, while relinquishing some freedoms, we have still retained our daily prayer times, daily meals, having our medications available, not having to worry about electricity, and enjoying opportunities to be with each other in new ways. Having only two sisters at a meal table has perhaps provided us with a chance to really visit with someone in a deeper way than we have done in a long time.  Perhaps we have learned something new about them, even if it was just a little thing.  We have had time to do things we might not normally think about doing every day:  taking a nap, sitting outside, walking the grounds regularly, spending more time in a garden, cleaning out that one drawer, or the box in the closet. We’ve been more creative with our time, and making something for others.  

No doubt you may be feeling restless as we find ourselves “sheltering - in”.  We may have even become sorrowful, angry, or resentful as we struggle with the restlessness or – found ourselves asking God “How long O Lord will this last?” (a question right out of our psalter).

A few years ago at our retreat, Fr. Dan Ward, OSB shared a song with us from Janet Sullivan Whitaker, entitled “Land of the Living”.   The title “Land of the living” is a line found in a number of psalms and other Biblical passages.  The song goes like this:  

Verse 1:
One thing I ask and all that I seek
Is to live with you forever in the land of the living
Nobody knows what hardships await,                                                       
but we all can help each other in the land of the living
Here and Now, don’t look to the sky when the reign of our God is here.

Refrain:
Let none of us fear, we do this together,
Let nothing confound in us the Gospel of peace
With God as our strength, we shall build-up,
Here and Now in this land, the land of the living.

Verse 2:
Some may be weak, and some may be strong
But each of us is blessed in the land of the living
Justice will roll, and all shall return
to a Love that lasts forever in the land of the living
Here and now, don’t look to the sky when the reign of our God is here.

Refrain:
Let none of us fear, we do this together,
Let nothing confound in us the Gospel of peace
With God as our strength, we shall build-up,
Here and Now in this land, the land of the living.

I think those words are most appropriate during this pandemic time.  Even amidst the suffering, the death, the pain of poverty, the sadness and restlessness which have accompanied this pandemic, we know that God is here and God is now.  God is with us – whether we be weak or strong – we are all blessed in this land of the living. 

Let none of us fear.  Although how we gather looks different in a pandemic, we are together, with God as our center and our strength.