"Co-operating With God's Goodness"

“Christ has no body now on earth but yours.  No feet now but yours.  No hands but yours.  Yours are the eyes with which Christ looks at the world with compassion.  Yours are the feet with which Christ goes about doing good. Yours are the hands with which Christ blesses us now.”            --St. Teresa of Avila

This is one of my favorite prayers of St. Teresa’s.  These days it has become more of a challenge than a prayer.  For the most part, I consider myself to be a pretty optimistic person.  Oh sure, there would be days I would feel sad or discouraged or disappointed but I always seemed to snap back.

There did come a time in my life not long ago when I felt genuine despair.  I remember thinking, “This is what people must feel like when they have no hope, or no recourse to justice.”    I could really identify with those Psalms in the Hebrew Scriptures that cry out to God, longing for a better and more just world.

One day in the midst of all that despair I literally did cry out to God.  I was jogging in my neighborhood, crying, pouring my heart out to God.  I remember saying, “God just show me some sign of your goodness, let me know that there is goodness in the world.”  A few blocks later God answered my prayer.

I passed an old man walking his dog and the old man smiled and spoke a kind word to me.  What made this such a powerful answer to my prayer was that a few weeks earlier I had passed the same man on one of my jogs and he and his dog had been quite grumpy toward me!

That experience taught me that if I long for the world to be a better place, a more just place, a place that does not give folks over to despair, then I must be part of making it good and more just.

As Christians we cannot accept the attitude of ‘well that is just the way the world is.’  We must co-operate with the Creator in transforming history into God’s reign of justice and love.  That is the good news.  We do not have to change the world by ourselves, but we do need to look for the places where God’s Spirit is at work and co-operate with God’s goodness.

That insight has really made St. Teresa’s prayer come alive for me.  I pray it now not so much as a challenge as a promise.