discomforts of discipleship, The

Spiritual Life, Winter 2000 by Hannan, Maryanne

SAMUEL SPOKE THE FOLLOWING WORDS blindly into the night, in response to a voice calling his name: "Speak, Lord, your servant is listening" (1 Sm 3:10). Without any inkling of what he would hear in return, he went forward and signaled his readiness to receive the Lord's direction. In this way Samuel began his service to God as leader of the Jewish people during their tumultuous transition from rule by judges to the period of kings.

A Dilemma

As a committed Catholic Christian, I should be able to say Samuel's prayer with happy abandon. I am fortunate. I have more than an inkling of what to expect: I have God's revelation of himself in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. Yet, I find these words (a sine qua non of life in Christ) difficult to pray with an open mind and heart. Why? I have to admit I am a coward. I realize that such a plea would not fade softly into the night and begin again with the morning's light, in an endless comforting cycle. It is quite the opposite. I believe that God responds eagerly to any person who issues Samuel's invitation. If I persisted in such openness to God, I would get increasingly clearer answers about how to live the gospel. No longer would I have the luxury of considering it a lofty ideal to love God above all else and my neighbor as myself. It would become an imperative. Everything would be changed by this prayer. This prayer is dangerous; it is life-transforming. In such a context, I utter it carefully.

As weak-minded and self-serving as these thoughts are, I could probably live with them. I could justify the corners I constantly cut by reminding myself that I am only human. I could fool myself by looking to a better day, a fuller conversion when the time was right. But it doesn't end there-with me, myself, and I. By the very fact that I publicly acknowledge my faith by participation in the sacraments and the communal life of the church, I am a witness to my faith, for better or worse. That is true for everyone. For those of us who take up leadership roles in the church, the burden is even greater. There is always a tension between the way we live our faith and the ideal to which we give witness. Sometimes it gets too difficult to ignore the gap between our public and our private selves.

I am a writer. My favorite assignments are scriptural meditations. I deeply enjoy the process of reflecting on and writing devotions for our daily readings. I read whatever the assigned passage is, and then I pray over it, let it simmer, and come back to it over and over again in a loose kind of lectio divina. I hold the passage in my mind and heart for however long it takes. "Speak, Lord, your servant is listening" could spring easily from my lips at any point in the process. By the time I come to the actual task of writing, the words come tumbling out.

But what words are these? And who am I to speak them? Over and over again, I discover from my own writing that the real gospel is the social gospel. Jesus came for the poor and the marginalized. Jesus meant what he taught on the Mount. He wants us to take the Beatitudes seriously. These are not sound bites; they are for real. So, I sit in my extremely comfortable home and write about the imperatives of a social gospel-what hypocrisy, and of such long standing. I remember wondering, as a young girl, why the rich man in the gospel asked Jesus what else he could do. He should have been able to anticipate the answer. I used to think, "Why didn't he leave well enough alone?" I believed that to a be perfectly reasonable solution to an uncomfortable situation. The cowardice that seemed so ingenuous in my youth can now be seen for what it is. Sad to say, however, I am changing very slowly.

How can I promote myself as a Christian writer if I pray Samuel's words, "Speak, Lord, your servant is listening," only when I pick up the pen but not when I get up in the morning to go about my business? What right do I have to preach Jesus' words in Scripture to others if I am reluctant to live as one who has heard the words of the Lord and believed? How can I, who have taken the easy path time and again, exhort others to do differently? Even more difficult, how can I give expression to my finer moments (if I can find them) without swelling with pride, or worse, being remembered for these moments long after I have reverted to my former self ?

Witness to the Word

Mother Teresa, Saint Therese of Lisieux, Eberhard Arnold, and Fr. Henri Nouwen wrote in great humility about living the gospel message, with words of sublime simplicity. I cannot. My words, next to theirs, are like cymbals crashing because I speak without their love. I simply do not have the moral authority to write as they do, yet it is my vocation to try. I write about a set of beliefs that I support but do not fully live. My own writing disturbs my conscience more than what I read of others' writings. Because I am unworthy of the message, should I stop writing? While I speak now in the context of being a Christian writer, any person seeking to witness to his or her faith in the real world has this same experience. It is the same struggle for balance that people in ministry have always had to face, but from which the laity frequently hid in years past. "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt 5:48) is something to which we should aspire, but we cannot keep silent until we achieve that state.