Reaching The End

“YOU HAVE granted me, unworthy as I am, to attain the long desired end of this work”. Almost with a sigh of relief, Saint Anthony addressed this prayer to the Lord in the Epilogue to his great work on the Sunday Gospels. It was with a similar sense of relief that your Columnist, over the summer, finished correcting the proofs for the final volume of our Saint’s Sermons for Sundays and Festivals! To say nothing of compiling a list of corrections to the earlier volumes, resulting from his negligence before!



“I have somehow composed this work”, the Saint went on. On completing some great project we are often slightly surprised to have done it, but ‘somehow’ we have got there. The good Lord alone knows how! Anthony asked his readers – the brothers of the Order for whom he had composed it at the instigation of Francis himself – to remember him in their prayers. He also asked them, if they found anything helpful in his work, to give the praise to God; and if they found anything unhelpful – badly put, dull, or less well expressed – “to put it down to my weakness, blindness and lack of wisdom”. And if anything should be found to be actually erroneous, he hoped wiser minds who came after him would correct it.





Time of rejoicing





In the month of November, we remember especially the Holy Souls, and our minds are sobered by thoughts of death. Each of us has been set a ‘project’ by God, to be completed in our lifetime. That project is simply to perfect the image of God that has been imprinted upon us by our Creator. More specifically, it is to make our lives as Christ-like as we can. As the end of our journey draws near, it is natural for us to feel some trepidation regarding our success.



“Our life is over like a sigh, our span is seventy years or eighty for those who are strong” (Ps 89.10). Your Columnist also completed over the summer his seventy years, so forgive him if thoughts of mortality are in his mind! At the time of writing I see the unmistakeable signs of autumn outside my window. Anthony was very conscious of the seasons, and in several places uses them as an image of our human life, natural and spiritual. He imagines a seed in winter, a grain of wheat, inert and hidden. In spring it starts to shoot, in summer it reaches maturity, and in autumn it is ripe for harvest and is gathered in.





The eternal harvest





By the time you read this in northern lands, the harvest will be over. In the southern hemisphere, you are looking forward to summer, but we all understand the general picture. In the Gospels, our Lord too uses images drawn from the agricultural year to depict the human condition. It is a key element in the picture that, in societies that live close to the rhythms of nature, harvest is a time of rejoicing and feasting. In our thoughts about the eternal harvest, this should be a key element too.



“All is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin”, goes a popular harvest hymn. We often relate the idea of ‘salvation’ or ‘being saved’ to whatever grim fate or danger we are saved from; we should put our emphasis on the joy and security we are being saved to. God has made us for joy, for fulfilment, for love. To do so, he has also had to give us the gift of freedom, with the risk that we will misuse that gift and fail to reach our goal. But we should never, ever, forget that God wants us to come to him, to be happy in him, and that he has in Jesus Christ himself taken the greatest risk and made the greatest sacrifice to bring this about.





Being Christ-centred





Saint Francis was Christ-centred. Franciscan theology is Christ-centred. The great Franciscan saints – Clare, Anthony, Bonaventure and the rest – were all Christ-centred. The martyrs, from Berard and his companions down to Maximilian Kolbe and beyond, were all Christ-centred. Saint Paul wrote to his converts of his concern that Christ should be formed in them, that they should ‘put on’ Christ. This is the only point of our lives. We shall not be asked whether we have achieved this, or been successful in that. We shall be measured by how much we have had the mind and heart of Christ in all our doings and dealings. Have we really cared about our neighbour? Have we put self-interest above the common good? Our shortcomings will be repaired by the healing pains of Purgatory.



Saint Anthony, in his journeying and preaching – and writing – was not concerned to make a name for himself. He was concerned to make Christ known, and to invite men and women, with urgency, to turn to Christ and form their lives in his image. During his last winter he was engaged in writing advice to preachers, to guide their words on the festivals of the Church. In his final spring he suspended this work to preach directly to the people of Padua as they prepared for Easter. As summer came he retired to Camposampiero, and composed his own soul in readiness for the Lord’s call.





Anthony’s epilogue





It did not matter that he was not destined to complete the task of writing on the Festivals. The Lord was hardly going to ask, “How come you never finished your book?” At each moment of his life, he was ready to continue (if the Lord willed) and ready to depart (if the Lord called). The words he had written a few years before, on finishing his earlier work, stand as the Epilogue to his whole life: “To you, Lord Jesus Christ, beloved Son of God the Father, who work all our good, be all praise, all glory, all honour and all reverence. You are Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. By the kindness of your mercy and the infusion of your piety, you have granted me, unworthy as I am, to attain the long-desired end of this work”.



May we all, when our time comes, be able to say the same!