Is this the day we have been waiting for?   The day of return?  Of settling accounts?  Are the clouds finally clearing?  Is the promise we have shared for so long about to come true?  Are we free at last?

What are we waiting for?  What controls my breathing?  The competition is stiff.  We wait for kids to return to school, for the first frost, for test results, playoffs, holidays.  We tough out deadlines.  We expect leaders to show their true colors.  Busy is everyday and Sunday.  Busy is who we are.  Now and then we look up from the buzz and hum, remembering God.  Remembering to wait for God.

A mystery unfolds in history.  What was unfathomable to our ancestors, what made no sense becomes who we are.  Truth shows its face in new ways.  Those who could not sit down together come to share a promise. What was not at all clear takes hold.  We are led, it seems, to belong to each other, to the world, and to God.

Father Kolvenbach calls Jesuit universities to the service of faith and the promotion of justice.  From research and education of students to hiring and salaries, all ordinary affairs are to be measured against this call.  He gives us plenty to grumble about.  Isn’t excellence enough?  What does justice have to do with chemistry or accreditation?  And we’re too busy to find out.  But secretly intrigued.  Cynicism pauses as memories surface of  truth that isn’t departmentalized or set on a production schedule.  A life where the horizon comes closer.  What does solidarity with the poor mean for my classroom?  These strange thoughts sound childish and oddly compelling.

Live with passion, says Paul.  With the urgency of one who feels time moving through her.  Live what we can’t fully grasp.

Something tugs at the corner of my awareness.  A small bother that doesn’t settle down.  Finally I notice.  My noisy heart thumps slower, I listen and speak not.  My silence is amazed by what is given: a moth clutching the screen or my child’s look.  Thank you, thank you.  Not the fear of flogging calls us home.  But the one who is present in the largeness of history and the smallness of things.

We are called to improbable lives, to wisdom born anew.  Live so the mystery of this day does not entirely escape me.  Live with passion even as we grow old.  Awake in time.