In life there are what you can term planners and pilgrims. This person who lives life as a planner is the person who desires to be in control of every aspect of his or her life. The aim is to plan each stage according to pre-set goals and then to take stock every now and then to see whether we are measuring up to the goals that we have set out for ourselves. The problem is that very often the goals that we set up for the way in which we live are based on what society in general dictates or considers as successful and valuable. There is not much room for God and the real emphasis is to try to live according to the normal expectations of others. The result very often is that we become very disappointed if we fail to achieve the standards or the objectives that are commonly accepted and portrayed in magazines, on TV and on other forms of the mass media.
The pilgrim is very different. The pilgrim sees life as a gift that gradually unfolds as we live it. The pilgrim knows that we can never control what happens during our lifetime. We can plan up to a certain extent, but there is always the unexpected. The pilgrim becomes prepared for the unexpected, but not in fear, rather in trust and in hope. This means that when failure and disappointment occur we do not become despondent or deterred from continuing our journey. Rather so called negative experiences become opportunities for personal and spiritual growth. This attitude goes against basing our lives on what others think or say. Rather it promotes an attitude of celebrating every moment as an opportunity for doing good and to be faithful to our responsibilities. Moreover, it is the realization that ultimately God is in control and while we commit ourselves to our responsibilities we also rely on the ever present God who is guiding, loving, nurturing, healing and forgiving.
Not one life, however short or tragic it might appear when lived with God, is wasted. During the past week, on Thursday August 9 we celebrated the feast of Edith Stein or as she is also known as Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She was born in 1891, in Breslau Germany in an Orthodox Jewish family but in 1904 she abandoned her family’s faith and became an atheist. When she attended classes at the University of Gottingen, she studied with a famous philosopher Edmund Husserl, and she later on became his assistant at the University of Freiburg. It was here that she came in contact with Catholicism and she embraced the Catholic faith after reading the story of St Teresa of Avila. In 1934, she joined the Discalced Carmelites at Cologne Germany. In 1938, she was transferred to a monastery in Holland because of the Nazi political situation. She was arrested on August 2, 1942, while she was in the chapel with the other sisters. As she was being taken away, she turned to her sister Rosa who also became a Catholic and said “Come, we are going for our people”. Together with many other Jewish Christians, the two women were taken to a transit camp in Amersfoort and then to Westerbork. This was in retaliation to a letter of protest written by the Dutch Roman Catholic Bishop against the government’s injustice and deportation of Jews.
In the face of such misery, Sr Teresa commented, “I never knew that people could be like this, neither did I know that my brothers and sisters would have to suffer like this…. I pray for them every hour. Will God hear my prayer? He will certainly hear them in my distress”. She became a witness to God’s presence in a world where God is absent. Together with so many others she died in Auschwitz. When she was beatified on May 1, 1987 Pope John Paul II said that the church “honoured a daughter of Israel who, as a Catholic during Nazi persecution, remained faithful to the crucified Lord Jesus Christ and, as a Jew, to her people is loving faithfulness”.
At a first glance, some may think that this has been a wasted life. There was so much promise to be successful in an academic career. Many could well think that this life has been tragic because it ended in a gas chamber surrounded by so much adversity, despair and pain. However, in reality, Edith Stein was able to live every single moment of her life animated and empowered by her conviction and faith. In reality what seemed to be a tragedy proved to be an everlasting triumph. Today she is not forgotten, rather she is held as an example of how to live life to the full, and how to turn what seemed to be severe difficulties into opportunities of giving life. She was able to do this because as a pilgrim she trusted that God who created her, was walking step by step with her. She is an example of hope and strength in the midst of adversity.
Our Catholic faith is still helping so many of us to be witnesses of hope and joy in the midst of adversity. I keep thinking about the selfless volunteers of the St Vincent de Paul Society and of other organizations in our parishes and Diocese where members are constantly bringing so much relief where there is so much need. There are so many of our people helping in hospitals, in aged care facilities, in orphanages, with people with disabilities and who provide practical help to families who feel alone, abandoned or lacking in basic necessities. I think about our married people who day after day try to continue to live their life long commitment in the midst of many challenges. I think about the generosity of many of our young people whose hearts rebel against any form of injustice and indecency. Indeed a full a meaningful life is not measured simply by what we achieve and by the successes that we may have accomplished. It is mainly measured by how we live our life, and how we develop our God given talents and gifts to be a source of blessing to those around us in whatever circumstances we may find ourselves in.
I conclude with a quote from the work of the great Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn entitled “Matryona’s House”. The main character meets a saintly woman, whose life has been full of disappointments but who constantly helped others. “We had lived side by side to her and had never understood that she was the righteous one without whom, as the proverb says, no village can stand”. This is living life to the full.
God Bless.
