Contrast this crawling pace that nature takes to recover with the experience of a media career that has a currency of approximately 15 minutes. We are aware that the present social fabric is weaved together by hypes and fads which rise and fall at meteoric speed. The challenge that accompanies this fluctuating ebb and flow is the heightened expectation of immediacy which when unmet easily plummets into frustration and despair. In our need for speed, even patience feels impatient these days.
Thus, the Gospel is truly appropriate in these unnerving days of the lockdown because God seems to be silent and unresponsive to our prayers. In the absence of God, just as well that we have the parables of the sower and the mustard seed to accompany us as we ease into Ordinary Time where the pedestrian tempo of the season is synonymous with monotony.
But this humdrum is useful as reminder to us that life is 99% mundane and only possibly 1% adventure. More than that, it gives us a sense of how God works. We use to bid farewell using the phrase “Go with Godspeed”. This benediction has nothing to do with momentum. Instead its meaning is more “material” as in asking God to bless someone with success along the way. Thus, when hyper-speed expects immediacy, Godspeed actually cautions us that the blessings we seek belong to the will of God because we succeed as and when the Lord deems fit and not as when we demand.
In what we desire, when we believe that we are in control of our destiny, we easily forget that God is providential. If anything, our failure to control Covid merely proves that everything is dependent on God. In the two parables of the Gospel, botany provides an organic portrait of how the principle of God’s hidden providence operates in the way plants have to germinate, sprout, and grow. In the first reading, Prophet Ezekiel speaks of the Creator who has absolute sovereignty over creation. He is the planter who tends to the cedars that grow.
In the light of the emerging “narratives” of the previously “debunked” lab-leak theories, we are reminded that creation, as fashioned by God, has a pattern of its own and a good gardener is one who respects the rhythms of nature. The beauty of creation is that it is plastic because we can shape it. We cross-breed and cross-fertilise. Countries have altered their coastlines and increased their landmass. Yet, in trying to dominate nature, we hear the oft-repeated mantra that climate change is beyond our control highlighting that there is a law inscribed into nature which we ought to respect. We are accustomed to dominating when organising life according to our whims and fancy. Perhaps nature has unkindly sent us a reminder that we may have forgotten the author of creation Himself, God our Lord.
The past do not have a monopoly of stupid but sadly, we may have just cornered the market for arrogance. Nature is one of God’s playbooks. God still speaks through nature but somehow His voice is muted in our quest not for stewardship but for dominance. It is truly unfashionable to even suggest that God dared to speak through a vocabulary of pestilence. It does not fit the accepted standard that a good God is capable of allowing a such a malady to afflict us. If God spoke to Noah in the past, it is conceivable that He can still speak to us.
In fact, the stalled progress in subduing this pandemic is a teaching moment. The “Spanish Flu” that infected a third of the world’s population in 1918 (1.5 billion inhabitants at that time), through four waves, ran a course of more than two years. This is not to say that we should prepare ourselves for a longer run of Covid. It did come at about the time when Our Lady appeared at Fatima which is perhaps an indication that we should do what is within our power, that is, to pray and trust in Providence.
Sadly, haste required for a solution to any problem we have is determined by what is convenient for us. We have come to expect lightning speed when it comes to change either in a person or a situation. However, the rationale for our feeble conversion is simply attributed to us being “works in progress”. We are unquestionably swift in judging others but monumentally reticent in condemning ourselves. This phenomenon whereby we are passive in self-recrimination and easily excusing ourselves could be more reflective of reality in the sense that it actually leads us back to how God’s providence operates.
Despite our sinfulness, God has been nothing but kindness towards us. As the Psalmist reminds us, “He is slow to anger and rich in mercy”. (Ps 145:8). The change we so deeply want to see in ourselves and in the world is best accomplished by trusting in God. When what we want cannot be rushed, prayer is the solution.
Prayer is a good place to start the process of appreciating that God’s providential pace is not always ours. Saintly mothers and saintly Queens come to mind when we think of how God works. St Monica who prayed hard for St Augustine her son. St Elizabeth of Portugal who patiently prayed for the conversion of her unfaithful and immoral husband, King Diniz. Despite praying and failing, many saints trust and know that God would answer their prayers, not in their time but in His time. Prayers give God space and time to work. As a scientific and technical culture we are so impatient that we generally set conditions that God must work according to our schedule.
According to St Thomas Aquinas, patience is attached to the virtue of fortitude which St Augustine would agree as it “allows a man to bear the evils of life with equanimity of soul without allowing himself to be troubled by vexations”. A patient person puts up with inevitable evil so as to remain on the right path in the ascent towards God. Thus, in the parable of the Mustard Seed, the sheer size of the seed and the shelter of the scrub highlight that faith is the key to our prayers and trust in God’s providential care. Built into providence is the exercise of patience especially in this time of great and grave adversity.
This pandemic is truly a blessed exercise of patient waiting for God to come to our assistance. It is not at all easy because of the economic hardship we can observe around us. But, as the Gospel rightly points out, if God is the sower, then our faith is the mustard seed that needs to sprout and grow. In such a difficult time, Prophet Micah prompts us “But as for me, I will look to the Lord, I will wait for God my Saviour; my God will hear me”. (Mic 7:7).
