You can be free of anxiety now

Advent shows us how.

Three friends of mine have made astounding progress this year, as I was privileged to witness. All of them put together spiritual lives that are breath-taking in their fecundity. One of them receives lights in mental prayer that astonish. Another embraced a path of spiritual growth that has resulted in the shedding of a spiritually crippling vice and the emergence and acceptance of long-desired new prospects for personal and professional life. A third friend finds himself in situations he did not anticipate at the beginning of the year, which he and his wife are facing together in ways they likewise could not have anticipated, to the strengthening of their marriage and their spiritual lives, and to the edification of their children. God wastes nothing.

All of my friends struggled deeply with anxiety, which, I think, is the besetting characteristic of our age. We are overwhelmed because we are bombarded. There is simply too much coming at us all the time for us to make sense of the world around us, unless we have really good filters, and even then, we run the risk of confirmation bias. Conflicting messages abound about politics, international affairs, the state of the economy, the state of the Church, the state of the Nation, the state of men, of women, of children, of boys, of girls, of nature…. Everyone has a hack for making money, getting into shape or better shape, losing weight, losing bad habits, developing good ones, getting work, and the list goes on and on.

All of my friends are victorious in facing the challenges of anxiety and uncertainty, because they are focused on the one thing needful. They tuned out the noise of the world and went into their own deserts, those places of silent struggle, each of them there to find the Lord and his healing touch. Each of them would describe their one thing needful in different language and in different ways; all of them have found ways to put Christ first through a life of piety that includes rich Marian devotion. All of them have found new ways to prepare the way of the Lord.

Advent — this Advent — is important for us. We are preparing for the Coming of the King at the end of our lives or the end of time — we know not which, and it is good for us we do not — by preparing to celebrate his birth as the Babe of Bethlehem. All that serves to focus us on Christmas serves to prepare us for our definitive encounter with the Lord at the end of our days, and should be embraced. All that does not, should not. It really is that simple, though the simplification is hard. Each of my friends truly embraced the Cross offered to them, because they had met the Babe and been touched by his smile at some point in their lives. They had come to know and belief that Jesus is not so much our Savior, in a general sense — though he is that — as that as he is my Savior; and that the things that shame and wound us — you, me — that we cannot heal and set aside: he can. They had come to know that when we follow and obey, we are healed.

Why is Marian devotion so important in the life of a Christian? I remember decades ago I had lost touch with my best friend from high school, and I wanted to reconnect. You know those old friends know us in ways that others do not, and can say and hear things with an economy that eludes those who do not know us quite so well. You also know it’s hard to lose dear friends. I couldn’t find his phone number anywhere, and this was before the Internet, so there was no on-line searching. How would I find my friend? I called his mother. She was delighted to hear from me and to give me his number, because she wanted us to be in touch.

Mary is like that. Mary is the perfection of that, since Mary is the perfect Mother. She wants us to know her Son; and since we are her children by adoption, by virtue of our being in Christ, she wants nothing but the best for us. And the best is Jesus. This is why while there are no hacks in the spiritual life, there is a shortcut: it is Mary. There is no Babe without the Mother. There is for us no finding him without her maternal engagement. There is no victory in the spiritual life without her battle on our behalf. Treatises are written about this. The simplest way to put it is that this is so because God has so willed it. She is an essential part of Advent; her fiat makes Advent possible, and all that follows from it.

I am getting a little ahead of myself, in anticipation of Monday’s Feast of the Immaculate Conception and again on Thursday’s Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Today we have two powerful Gospels to consider, one for the First Friday in Advent and the other for the optional memorial of St. Nicholas —- yes, that one, Santa Claus.

In the first Gospel, the Gospel of the day, two blind men call out to Jesus so that they might see. We don’t know whether they would be seeing for the first time or with sight restored. We simply know that they cried out for mercy, and when in answer to his question they told Jesus they did believe he could give them sight, he told them, “Let it be done to you according to your faith,” — an echo, perhaps, of Our Lady’s own fiat, “Let it be done to me according to your will.” Here the blind men prayed that their will would be his, and in his compassion he opened their eyes, because of their faith. He wanted them to see, because He wanted them to see Him. But what He wanted most of all was for them to want to see and to believe that he could heal them. He cannot act on our behalf without our faith, which gives him permission. He tells them to keep quiet about the miracle, but, really, how could they? All of a sudden they see, and when others ask them how is this possible they respond with “I can’t tell you?” Why would Jesus not want it to be broadly known that he had healed the men? Perhaps it is because it was not broadly accepted that He was, and is, as the blind men proclaimed, the Son of David. Nor is it even today.

Our second Gospel sheds more light. Jesus, King and Master, sends out the seventy-two, and he tells them to pray for more laborers for the harvest, to travel poor and undefended, to offer peace and when it is accepted to stay where it was offered, and to cure the sick and announce the Kingdom. He also tells them to greet no one along the way. Again a curious negative command: why wouldn’t they share the message along the road, and heal on their way to the places he intended to visit? Surely there might be people who would be receptive? Perhaps they were passing through hostile territory where the message and the demonstration of power would not be welcome. Perhaps there was another reason: perhaps preparing the way of the Lord admits of no other activity. There can be no distractions while we journey to the places we are sent to work. What we know is that there was no dialogue: Jesus gave the instructions, and he meant for them to be followed, whether the seventy-two fully understood or not. Here, too, perhaps, an echo of Bethlehem: Joseph and Mary made haste for Bethlehem; when they arrived at the inn, they found no welcome and offered no argument: they simply accepted the place to which they were directed, and they received those who came to pay homage to the Babe. The spiritual life is imitation of Mary and Joseph, and if that seems a bit much to you, whom do you suppose Jesus imitated?

Let us make haste to Bethlehem. Let us ask for eyes that see that path that leads us to see the Savior, for in the light of his countenance, we shall be saved. Let us look, too, for people we can bless with peace. Mary and Joseph travelled in haste, but they did not travel alone. Nor did the seventy-two. Neither should we.