On Being Quiet and Finding God Where We Are

I am a professor at Harvard Divinity School, where I have taught for almost 20 years. I am also a Catholic priest and a Jesuit, and I am in my 28th year of helping out with Masses on the weekend, at Our Lady of Sorrows parish in Sharon, MA. “Being a priest” and “being a scholar” may sound very different, and these vocations can indeed stand far apart. Yet in some ways, they require some of the very same virtues — including, as I wish to stress here, the ability to focus patiently on what is important, to dwell there, and gain enduring strength from the quietness of a moment’s insight. 

Let me explain, with reference to my early morning Mass in Sharon this Sunday, October 20.

I drove down to Sharon for the 730am Mass, on still dark highways on a day that was off to a chilly start, in the low 40s, even if later the temperature would reach 70. About 60 people showed up for this quiet Mass — no music at the first Mass of the Sunday. I began by reminding the congregation and myself that we were to pray in a still very troubled world: the Middle East is ablaze, the savage attack on Ukraine is unrelenting, even as people starve in Sudan and a host of countries that do not make the news. Hurricanes have done great damage in the United States. Our politics are fierce and turbulent. I also noted that the second collection at Offertory time would be for Catholic missions throughout the world — (and what is that mission today?) Much to pray about, pray for…

So what did I preach on? None of these crises or questions. Rather I simply focused on the second reading of the day, the short reading from the fourth chapter of Hebrews, that enigmatic New Testament book that some think was a baptismal discourse: "Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." (Hebrews 4:14-16; NRSV)

I reminded the congregation and myself of how simple and stark a view of Jesus is given here: yes, Son of God who passed through the heavens, the great high priest — but yes too, a human being “who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin”.

Jesus is like us in so many ways, tested and tempted as we are, enduring and standing firm in the face of external and internal challenges. We do not, I said, need to spend our prayer-time explaining to a lofty and far-off God how difficult it is to be human and suffer as we do; Jesus who is with us, interceding for us, knows our difficulties because he suffered the same, The Son of God, descended from heaven, is God-with-us, sorely tested as we are. To reinforce the point, I quoted a passage early in the fifth chapter: “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.” (Hebrews 5:7)

Jesus’ cries and tears: We may think immediately of the Garden of Gethsemane, that time of agony the night before he died, but Hebrews does not limit the prayers, the cries and tears, to any one moment (nor to the time Jesus wept over Jerusalem, nor the time he wept near the tomb of Lazarus). Perhaps there were more such moments of dark stress in his life than we might expect. Jesus is not one to whom we need to explain what it means to suffer or cry out in fear or pain: he experienced the same, and stayed the course, faithful to his calling.

After my homily and the Creed, we did mention the woes of our world in the Prayers of the Faithful. But none of that wider context figured in my homily. I was one-pointed, urging upon us all to be mindful of who it is that we speak to in prayer, with whom we pray: Jesus, whose compassion is universal because he endured not only the Passion, but the passions and trials of everyday life, throughout his life. If we get that point, I was suggesting, we pray better at the altar, we pray better as communion. And then we can go out from the Mass and face up to all the problems that deluge us and all people, all living beings everywhere. 

But, you may be asking, what does this have to do with my opening sentences, on the professor and the priest? The common element I have in mind is that in our classrooms, and in our writing, some of us professors and students might well attend to the great issues of the day, and study the media and cry out for justice now. But some others among us, as scholars and teachers and lifelong students, might choose another perfectly justifiable path, stepping away from that wider scene. Our task is to seek after the deep and holy wisdom that makes us think, question, answer as best we can; and that helps us to endure, to be unafraid even when sorely tested — and thus too finding within ourselves a wellspring of compassion that will last a very long time. 

The best scholars are the experts who know the difference between their expertise and their myriad opinions. The best teachers are those who help students find the one thing that matters, a truth or sentiment deep in a text ancient or modern, and who let them take that wisdom away from a course, back into daily life. Some of the most valuable of believers are those who seek out God amid the great and small sufferings of our lives, as the author of Hebrews tells us. That can be enough, the moment, from which we can gain the strength to love and be compassionate in practice, then, the next day, facing again the troubles that swirl around us each day.