Enthusiasm for God and the Things of God

Dear Friends,

In the Gospel, Jesus draws our attention to a crooked manager who has a redeeming quality – namely his enthusiasm for his own life. In a moment of crisis, this man acts shrewdly, wisely, and prudently to save himself. Jesus applauds his initiative and ingenuity. The crooked manager in Jesus’ story wants not just to survive, but to succeed, even if it means to move to a new place.

Through this story, Jesus tells His disciples and us to have the same enthusiasm for the reign of God that the crooked manager has for his own skin.

The call to be enthusiastic about God makes sense. The very word “enthusiasm” means being inspired by God.

It takes a lifetime to learn and internalize what it means to be a committed follower of Christ – to be public in living our faith and personal on our love for the stranger.

In some people’s lives, the name of this action on behalf of others is called heroism. Some heroes give some. Some give all. Certainly, unremarkable people turned into heroes on 9/11/2001 as strangers helped other strangers without regard for their own safety. Often in the years since then, we have heard stories of rescue and courage in the case of one, two a handful, a hundred people in danger.

Where did this heroism come from? From somewhere deep within them – some hidden place not even known to their self-consciousness.

That hidden place was their life drawn from God, their life with God. Our God – yours and mine – is the God of everyone. Some resist or ignore God, others know God in their daily lives. As the renowned psychologist Karl Jung put it, “Bidden or unbidden, God is present.”

News commentators in the aftermath of 9/11 had said that another possible target of the terrorists that day was the UN building. For some reason, that made me think of Dag Hammersjold, the UN Secretary General, whose plane crashed in Africa in 1961, when he was on a peace mission.

Then and often since, I have gone back to Hammersjold’s posthumous book called Markings, jottings written from the depths of his soul, for Dag Hammersjold wrestled with God all his life.

His words are apt for all heroes and for our own struggles with God:

  “I don’t know who – or what – put the question.

I don’t know when it was put.

I don’t even remember answering.

But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone – or Something –

and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and

my life in self-surrender had a goal.

I came to a time and place where I realized that the Way leads to

a triumph which is a catastrophe and a catastrophe which is a triumph…

After that, the word ‘courage’ lost its meaning,

Since nothing could be taken from me.” 

This is the deep truth that Dag Hammersjold found in his being. This is the inspiration of heroes. This is the awareness that lives in me: God’s presence, bidden or unbidden, in me. 

~Sister Joan Sobala