Expecting a Journey, Not a Miracle

After all my years as a newspaper reporter, you'd think I would be good at taking notes. But too many years have passed since that career. So I really can't say who, during the East Coast Fraternity Exercises, told us: "Expect a journey, not a miracle." Was it Father Rich in a homily? Father Carròn, on the videotape? One of them quoting Msgr. Luigi Giussani? I haven't a clue. But the wisdom of that thought has stuck to me.
So often, when I pray, I ask God to remove whatever it is I'm seeing as burden: Just get me through this exam. Heal my child. Get me a job. What am I saying, really? That our lives will be better if and when they are easier? When they are trouble free? Why, after all these years of living, do I continue to kid myself?

J., a young man in my School of Community, noted wisely: "But even when you get a miracle, it's just the start of another journey. " He told us this story. He had  returned to his parents' house after a couple of years out of state. He had come to the discovery that the career he'd chosen and trained for was not right for him. He prayed for a job while he figured out his true vocation. He landed one at the local supermarket and then he landed another one at a local high school. So the miracle came. But then the journey started again - determining how to juggle two jobs while training for a career that suited him better. The miracle began another journey.

As a mother, I know this. Struggling with infertility, I prayed and prayed for a baby. And then, I miscarried. I prayed for another child. And then, when the baby was born, I prayed for God to take away his serious illness. Years later, I prayed for the son, who had trouble finding friends. And then, when he found friends at last, I prayed he would make good decisions when he spent time with them.

What I keep forgetting is our lives are journeys in the presence of Mystery.  I keep forgetting the "thy will be done" part of our prayers.  At our wedding 18 years ago, I made sure my friend Keith played  the John Michael Talbot song "Be Not Afraid," because I was scared and I understood God goes before me. Always.

Then-Cardinal Ratzinger said this in the funeral homily of Msgr. Luigi Giussani: "to follow means to pass through a 'valley of darkness,' to take the Way of the Cross, and all the while to live in true joy."