The Secret 

A dear relative and a brother who has been reading Paolo Coelho recently sent me this quote on WhatsApp from his book “Eleven Minutes”: “That’s how it always happened in films: at the last moment, when the woman is just about to board the plane, the man races up to her, puts his arms around her and kisses her, and brings her back to his world, beneath the smiling, indulgent gaze of the flight staff. The words ‘The End’ appear on the screen, and the audience knows that, from then on, they will live happily ever after. ‘Films never tell you what happens next,’ she thought, trying to console herself. Marriage, cooking, children, ever more infrequent sex, the discovery of the first note from his mistress, the decision to confront him… No, films never show that. They finish before the real world begins. It’s best not to think too much about it.”

It is like this with almost all of our expectation with whatever we do. We crave therapeutic and ‘feel good’ experiences leaving out the details.
We have a modern culture that struggles with the day-to-day routine, the boring and mundane. It ignores them, it leaves them out and looks at them always as signs that things are not going well. We are told when things get repetitive, routine and ‘not exciting’ that we should ‘change’ and look for the ‘new’. We treat those moments as alarm bells and warnings meaning things are not well, a kind of red lights to stop and reevaluate out position. Christians even take it further and begin to interpret it as God’s will and signs from God to quit and give up and look for something new.

Young people, dare I say have been sold this idea as a kind ‘divinely’ revealed truth. So as they begin to embark on anything whether jobs, career, course, relationship, they quit as soon as they discover they are bored or hit a road block.

This so prevalent in modern culture in our movies and advertising where things are presented as idealistic and perfect. Even reality TV shows look for the controversial, exotic and exciting and avoid the routine and daily struggle because it does not rate. Shows like “The Bachelorette” present marriage poorly and extrinsically. As soon as he or she choose the spouse, they live happily ever after and the show ends. What happens when they come home tired and angry, who knows and who cares. And when the financial situation becomes burdensome, well we don’t know. This instills a false belief in all of us that when we don’t all feel so good that something is wrong and we need to quit.

I am just on my way from people’s climate March, a historic and successful March with tens of thousands turning up. I sense we Catholics are like that also about Social Justice. We struggle to hang in there for the long haul.

I am not being self righteous or holier than thou. I struggle with this immensely. The routine chokes me. Daily prayer is a struggle and persistence is not on the list of great qualities that I possess.

Yet the law of life is like this. We must be patient. I need to learn from nature. Plants and trees that start as seeds need time to grow. They endure the sunlight, heat and rain. Yet in the fullness of time they bear much fruit. We also need to treat those mundane and routine moments as ‘God moments’. Many mystics were able to be the best version of themselves, that is saints because they understood this ‘secret’. Not the secret in the popular book ‘the secret’ about positive thinking and that thoughts become things.

The real secret is that those boring, useless, feeling-less, days and times are ‘sacramental’. They are signs indeed, not that we must quit and change asap, but visible signs of the invisible presence of God. Sacraments cause grace says Thomas Aquinas referring to the seven sacraments and these too cause grace because where God is present, grace IS.

They may seem moments that we are being chocked but hidden inside them is life. What may seem to be moments of death are in fact moments of life. ‘Everything is grace’ said the mystic Therese of Lisieux. Indeed they are grace-filled moments where much of the life fruit is born, where we learn so much, grow so much and bear much fruit.

This is not to say that if we avoid them it is evil or sin or wrong, it just means we are missing opportunities to dig deeper to discover the bidden treasures inside of us. There will be plenty of other opportunities, don’t worry, but the sooner we live with boredom, routine and joyless moments, the sooner we go beyond just feeling and the more depth we acquire, and the deeper we become the more we meet God and we see things from God’s eyes.

This is so true across the board especially in relationship with God and marriage. Surprise, surprise that these are the two areas that we struggle with most today. We are being lied to. We are being told to pray when ‘we feel like it’ only because this is when God is most present. And being mislead when we are told that when marriage life gets boring that there is something wrong because it needs to be an endless high powered relationship.

Renewal is essential and change is intrinsic. We need these from time to time. As I write this I am thinking of a change that I must undergo. This is even more for young people as they discover their identity. But if we pick up an ongoing patterns in our lives of ongoing change to run away from a routine that keeps finding us, then perhaps we need to try another approach. Let us ride the wade and discover the hidden God in them as we patiently persevere on a journey that will give us enormous fulfillment and growth, a journey from death to real life, a paschal journey.