Arise
— go! Sell all you possess. Give it directly, personally to the poor. Take up
My cross (their cross) and follow Me, going to the poor, being poor, being one
with them, one with Me.
Little — be always little! Be simple, poor,
childlike.
Preach the Gospel with your life — without
compromise! Listen to the Spirit. He will lead you.
Go into the marketplace and stay with Me. Pray,
fast. Pray always, fast.
Be hidden. Be a light to your neighbour’s feet.
Go without fear into the depth of men’s hearts. I shall be with you.
The Little Mandate of Madonna House
Pray always. I will be your rest. – And with
this final line we come to the end of this little series of commentaries on the
Little Mandate, the words God gave our foundress Catherine Doherty to be the
guiding spirit of Madonna House.
I will
freely confess that when it comes to this last line of the Mandate, I don’t
really get what is being said here—we are all works in progress, and in my case
the progress has not yet progressed to this beautiful place yet of experiencing
either constant prayer or Christ being my rest. I am quite certain of the
truth, beauty, and goodness of these words, but I haven’t yet reached the
direct experience of them, not yet. Some day.
‘Rest’ is a
big word for most people, I imagine. We are all a little tired. Nobody quite
gets enough sleep. Nobody feels entirely well, entirely fresh and bouncy. Well,
maybe some people do, and youth especially is known for its inexhaustible
energy. But as one gets older… well, we get tired. Not sick, not miserable, not
incapable of functioning—just a wee bit tired.
And so we
look for a place of rest. I have my annual vacation coming up in a few weeks,
and I’m not ashamed to say that I am deeply looking forward to it. I think the
Lord in this line of the mandate is disclosing something to us about what it
means to be at rest that takes us so far beyond this normal human level,
though. For us, ‘rest’ is synonymous with ‘respite’. For God, ‘rest’ is
synonymous with ‘consummation’. In other words, a being comes to a state of
rest when it reaches its proper place, its home, its state of fulfillment.
Well, our
proper place and home and fulfillment is not a week at the cottage sipping
cocktails by the beach. Our home is the heart of God, and the heart of God is
the wellspring of love in the world. ‘Pray always’, at a deep level, means the
same thing as ‘love always’, since prayer is communion with God and God is
Love.
Our rest,
then, is found in our relationship with Him. He doesn’t say here, Pray always,
and I will give you rest. He says that He will be our rest. And this takes us very deep indeed. As I finish this
series on the Little Mandate, it is right and proper that the last sentence of
the Mandate takes us where we really need to be taken.
Namely, to Jesus.
Our life is about Jesus. It is for Him, from Him, and towards Him. He is the
source of the ‘Arise – go!’, the command to movement that begins the journey of
the Gospel life, and He is the destination to which we are heading, and He is
the way itself of love and service in the world.
The Little
Mandate of Madonna House is a 118-word revelation of the radical Christ-centred
nature of Gospel life and love in this world. And it does come down to this ‘pray
always’ business. If we are going to take up the cross of the poor, we have to
pray always. If we are going to be little, simple, poor, childlike, we have to
pray always. If we are going to preach the Gospel with our life, do little
things exceedingly well for love, love without counting the cost, go into the
marketplace, into the depths of men’s hearts, be a hidden light to the feet of
our neighbour… we have to pray always.
We have to
pray always because all of this is what Jesus does and who Jesus is for us, and
our living of it is utterly impossible save by His constant intervention and
help in our life. We can do nothing without Him; with Him, all things are
possible.
‘Pray always’
does not mean hours spent in silent contemplation. It does mean a constant
dialogue with God throughout our busy days. It does mean cultivating a habit of
prayer, whereby in the midst of everything that fills our life we continually
go to that place of rest—not a place of inactivity and torpor, but a place of fulfillment,
consummation, intense activity of love and communion.
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