This talk of waiting on God brought to mind the conclusion of Carlo Carretto's book The God Who Comes.
Carlo was one of the Little Brothers of Charles de Foucauld who lived the life of a hermit. I discovered and devoured his writings while barely 20 and discerning whether I would live my life according to the faith I had inherited, or not.
Some 40 years later, I am very grateful for Carlo's writings (despite his whacky politics ) and remember well this conclusion to what was then my favourite work:
During my life I have had plenty of time to discover my poverty in body, in heart, in spirit.
At first it annoyed me; sometimes it scandalised me, as something incomprehensible.
Then it made me think.
The meeting with Jesus in the gospel taught me endurance, resignation, acceptance of this poverty of mine.
But when He, Jesus, and the Father sent the Holy Spirit, I understood and lived the beatitude of poverty - the loving and joyful understanding of my limits, the certainty that life is born of death, the contemplative experience that visible things are images of the invisible and that poverty on this earth is only thirst for heaven, which is thirst for the Absolute.
Then I walked with faith on the path of my poverty to meet with Him, the Invisible, the Eternal One, Life, Light, Love, the Merciful One, the Personal God, the God of Abraham, the God of Moses, the God of Elijah, the God of Jacob, the God of Christ.
The meeting has not always been easy: darkness, nausea, dryness, desire to escape.
But I have remained sustained by hope.
I have understood that God is the God who comes.
And I have waited.
For me to pray means to wait.
On the frontier of my limits, in the tension of my love, to have the strength to wait....
....And even as I foresee that my poverty will grow as I approach death, and that the waiting will always be more bitter, I no longer wish to break the appointment.
By now the God who comes has conquered me, and my eyes, tired of seeing only things here below, are happy to smile at Him.
And I should like them to be well opened and ready to smile before His marvels when He comes the last time to break through the veil of my limits and to introduce me - with all 'His people' which is the Church - into His invisible Kingdom of light, life, and love.
In order to hurry that day, from now on I am taking for myself the most beautiful prayer, expressed in the last words of Revelation and placed like a seal on revealed things:
"Come Lord Jesus".
How I embrace as mine the joyful hope contained in the reply:
"Yes, I am coming soon."
Amen!
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