What is the “one thing needed” today?
The world is in a deepening crisis. It grows in depth, gravity and danger daily, it seems. The real possibility of a new world war is a threat of increasing credibility. Uncontrollable consequences of current wars and continuing terrorist attacks against any target of opportunity, rob any serious thoughtful observer of confident optimism toward the future, distant or near. Nation is against nation, culture against culture, ideology against ideology. Civilization itself is attacked within nations by their own citizens – a kind of cultural suicide that exposes rebellion within human nature itself: no one is safe. Enemies are neighbors, family, coworkers, one’s own self! No one can be trusted, because the world is without love.
Solutions are offered. Some, the secularists, want to restructure the structures of society: we need to reorder the bureaucracy. Some, the clericalists, see that the church has become dysfunctional: we need to restructure our religion. The pope restructures his curia; the bishop restructures his diocese; the pastor restructures his parish. Some, the spiritual, see that love is lost because faith is lost: we need to reform and teach the leaders; we need renewal of the formators of clergy, of catechists, of liturgists, of liturgies – of worship itself.
All will be wastes of time, fruitless, mere delay of inevitable failure until we discover and deal with the real poverty at the foundation of our life. We busy ourselves with rearranging the furniture while ignoring that the house is on fire; the earth trembles in deep prophetic quakes pronouncing “contradiction!” We continue to do the impossible. We insist on a fantasy. We refuse to awaken from the self-satisfying dream that is in fact a nightmare: living as if God is not here, as if He does not see us and all we do and even think. We refuse to believe that apart from Him, actually, we can do nothing. And since that is true, all that we do ought to be in whole-hearted union with Him.
Remembering St. John Vianney’s simple realization, “Prayer is nothing other than union with God,” the one thing needed is immediately seen; the answer to the needs of humanity today is clear: We need to live in prayer. We need to live, to do, to work, to rest prayerfully, “in prayer.” Our consciousness of God, our presence with the ever-present God, must be continuous, habitual, covenantal, substantial, sustained.
And why has it not been, before now? Why has the obvious not been embraced and lived before now, yet? Because we do not love Him as we should – as is commanded, in His laws of life. And we do not love Him because we do not know Him. We hardly seek to know Him. In truth we often seek to avoid Him. But when we do seek to know Him, we approach His Glory. His Glory would blind us, but then we could see. His Glory would consume our lives, but then we could live. We need to trust Him, to believe Him, to believe in Him, to be in Him and He in us: our vocation, our call from the instant when, by His will, we began.
It is all here: the journey to find and be found, to embrace and be embraced, to consummate union:
Our Father, who is in heaven,
Hallowed be your Name!
Your Kingdom come!
Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven!
Give us this day our Bread for the day,
And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Lead us not into temptation,
And deliver us from evil,
Amen and Amen.
