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Camillus House News
Advent 2009: HOPE
December 2, 2009
Dr. Paul R. Ahr
All the great spiritual leaders in history were people of hope. Abraham, Moses, Ruth, Mary, Jesus, Rumi, Gandhi, and Dorothy Day all lived with a promise in their hearts that guided them toward the future without the need to know exactly what it would look like. Let's live with hope. - Henri Nouwen
“Advent is a season of hope,” Monsignor John Vaughan told his parishioners at St. Patrick’s Church on the Beach this Sunday. It is a time of anticipation and preparation. It is an opportunity to practice patient waiting. It is a way to identify with others who are also in waiting.
Why practice? In this fast-moving world of ours a high value is placed on spontaneous action, on “getting it right” the first time, rather than on practice making perfect. But as Malcolm Gladwell points out in Outliers, those persons whom most would consider the “greatest” in their fields, from technology to business to the arts, have been persons who have practiced and practiced and practiced their skill or art or profession.
Why patient? In Out of Solitude, Nouwen teaches us that “Without patience our expectation degenerates into wishful thinking. Patience comes from the word “patior” which means “to suffer.”…What seems a hindrance becomes a way; what seems an obstacle becomes a door; what seems a misfit becomes a cornerstone.”
Why waiting? The French authoress Simone Weil writes in her notebook, “Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.” Waiting patiently provides the foundation for receptivity and openness.
Over the past several years, the Brothers, Board, benefactors, clients and staff of Camillus House have been practicing patient waiting for the opportunity to begin the work on our New Camillus House Center. Recent events have made the realization of this expectation (not wishful thinking) seem especially elusive. As my wife Pat asks when we are beset by a personal or family setback: “What is the lesson we are supposed to learn here?”
Perhaps the lesson here is to remain one in solidarity with others who are also waiting to achieve their goals, especially the persons we meet at Camillus House who are limited – perhaps even constrained - by their medical conditions, their mental illnesses and addictions, their illiteracy and inadequate education, and their un-employability and poverty. With true compassion for those whom we serve, we – they and us – will prevail as “what seems a hindrance becomes a way; what seems an obstacle becomes a door; what seems a misfit becomes a cornerstone.”
Let us live with hope.
