By MARIA SERMERSHEIM
MEDITATIONE IGNIS
We often submit to paradigms of constant stress – always worried about the next big deadline, and counting the precious moments we have to work rather than the precious moments of chance encounters with other people. We are stressed to the degree that we believe that the deadline is inescapable and that, somehow, the result of the task deeply affects our identity. One would never admit that twofold fear in so many words, of course; nonetheless, it is truly this mentality which begets crushing stress, though neither tenet is true.
We have actually chosen, at least indirectly, most of the obligations we believe to be inescapable; and if we do fail the task in some way, it does not impinge on our ultimate identity, which is grounded in Christ. My freshman year of college, I heard an excellent lecture on interior freedom from Father Jacques Philippe, and his witness convinced me of the impenetrable freedom that is granted by recognizing the Lord’s love for me. My performance in occupational commitments — at that time, my first round of final exams at Notre Dame — could not change God’s love for me. My “inescapable” finals were functions of my blessed life as a student, and my existence and personality – and the unique way that God loves me – were not going to be changed, even if I failed every last exam. That lecture profoundly transformed my disposition, and I walked around campus in wonder, repeating, “I have the freedom to fail!”
Recently, however, I again fell prey to the mentality of frantic stress, and I needed to be reminded of the truth. “What do you have that you have not received?” (1 Cor 4:7). The answer is nothing, and this reality resounds throughout our lives. We receive our existence from God. He continues to guide everything in his providence even while allowing our freedom; and though we certainly bear responsibility for our actions, our failures will not tarnish our lives beyond all redemption because “God works all things to the good for those who love him” (Rom 8:28). Ultimately, our salvation and the redemption of the world is not in our own two human hands.
As Pope Benedict XVI wrote, “this classification of human activity as only of penultimate importance gives it at the same time an inner liberation: man’s activity can now be carried on in the tranquility, detachment, and freedom appropriate to the penultimate. The primacy of acceptance is not intended to condemn man to passivity; it does not mean that man can now sit idle…. On the contrary, it alone makes it possible to do the things of this world in a spirit of responsibility, yet at the same time in an uncramped, cheerful, free way, and to put them at the service of redemptive love.” This priority of the Lord’s action in everything frees us so completely that we should never fall prey to such suffocating stress, not even periodically.
This is the way I want to live: uncramped, cheerful, acting always in a spirit of responsibility. I want this tranquility and detachment as I work, as I let redemptive love seep into everything in my life. May we all recognize that our own efforts are only of penultimate importance for what matters most, and that our deadlines are merely human things that do not define us. May we accept that this truth grants us immense and permanent freedom.