This past Sunday, I told my mother-in-law that I’d signed a contract for my new book, The Times Are Wretched.
She laughed. “Is there a happy book hidden under that title?”
Why, as a matter of fact, there is!
The title is taken from his St. Augustine’s Sermon 311: “And you all say, ‘The times are troubled, the times are hard, the times are wretched.’ Live good lives, and you will change the times by living good lives.”
Really, it’s not grim at all. It’s liberating. We can so easily feel like victims of “the times,” but we’re not. The times are nothing but “the rising of the sun,” says Augustine, and “Who was ever harmed by the rising of the sun? Who was ever harmed by its setting?”
We can’t control the cycle of days, but everything else is within our power. At least, with God’s help it is.
Most of us are feeling pretty wretched right about now, I think. I’m torn between by sympathy and admiration for the Ukrainian people and my anger at Western governments who’ve been needlessly antagonizing Moscow for decades.
Mostly, though, it’s the former. Like the rest of the world, I’m astonished by the heroism of the Ukrainian people.
The farmer who used his tractor to tow away a Russian tank—he’s a hero.
The man who found Russian soldiers stranded on the side of the road and kindly offered to give them a lift back to Moscow—he’s a hero.
The young couple who moved their wedding forward so they could spend their honeymoon taking up arms to defend their country against invaders—they’re heroes, if heroes ever existed.
They’re changing the times by living good lives. But what about us? What can you and I can do, here and now, to help bring an end to this pointless war?
Many of us are praying for Ukraine and Russia, as we should. But how many of us really believe that anything will come of it? Most Americans pray daily, and three-quarters of us pray at least once a month. How many of us think we’re doing any good? I wonder.
Whenever the country (or the world) is in some crisis, public figures use “thoughts and prayers” as shorthand for “I’m not actually going to do anything about this.” But that’s all wrong. Prayers aren’t a substitute for action. Prayer is the most powerful action we mortals are capable of.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Our Lord says, “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” Seems pretty straightforward. But then, a few chapters later, His disciples try to cast out a demon from a boy. They fail. When they ask Jesus why, He tells them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from hence to yonder place,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.”
So it’s not just about saying the words, “God, bring peace to the Ukraine.” It’s not about how badly we desire peace. It’s whether or not we really believe that God can deliver.
As Christians, we know God can indeed change the tide of war. The Holy League’s miraculous victory at Lepanto is proof enough. But the Old Testament is full of stories about Israel begging God to save His people, and He obliges. So King David wrote,
He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear,
he burns the chariots with fire!
Why don’t our prayers work as well? Again, I strongly suspect it’s because we lack faith. “God may provide some sort of air support,” we think, “but it won’t be done right unless I do it myself.”
This has been called the error of activism, and it’s a very serious error. Our Lord says, “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”
Apart from me you can do nothing. How many of us really believe in God’s power—and man’s powerlessness?
This isn’t a new problem, of course. When Jesus was commissioning the twelve apostles, He said to them, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s will.”
Still, I think it’s made worse by what we’ve called internalized materialism. Even among traditional Christians, the idea that we would sincerely entrust Ukraine and Russia to Providence is a little anachronous. It smacks of “quietism.” God helps those who help themselves, after all.
Now, if you feel that God is calling you to join the Ukrainian international brigades, do that! But if your alternative to “quietism” is anxiously doomscrolling on Twitter—well, that’s no help to anyone.
You’re certainly not helping yourself. In his letter to the Philippians, St. Paul writes,
Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Not only does God offer to fight our battles for us: He gives us peace the very moment we place ourselves in His care.
Yes, I know: easier said than done. Believe me, I struggle as much as the next guy. But when I needed a reminder that the God of Love is running the show, I strongly suggest that you to sit down and read the First Epistle of St. John the Beloved.
Everything John wrote was beautiful. But when you realize that you’re reading the words of an historical figure who knew Christ, who was “lying close to the breast of Jesus” at the Last Supper—how can anyone not believe?
In Ecclesiastes it says, “If the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves on the earth.” That’s what reading John is like. He’s so full of heavenly things that they seem to burst from his heart and fall onto the page like rain.
At the beginning of his first letter, John says, “We are writing this that your joy shall may be complete.” Go and see. Read the whole thing. It won’t take more than fifteen minutes.
So, I do hope that, rather than spending the next forty days fretting—endlessly, uselessly—over the situation in Ukraine, we spend this holy season of Lent giving ourselves completely over to prayer and fasting.
Who knows? Maybe the graces we accrue preparing for Easter will help turn the tide of this war—or rather turn the tide against war, towards peace. And why not? As Fr. Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen reminds us, “God has willed the distribution of grace in the world to depend upon the prayers of men.”
What if He’s waiting for you to get serious about trusting Him? And why shouldn’t we trust Him? “Either not a sparrow falls to the ground without Him,” said George MacDonald, “or there is no God.”
On a somewhat less serious note, this arrived in the mail yesterday from our friends at Hearth & Field:
Like all good gifts, it’s totally undeserved. I mentioned them in a blog post once because, as soon as I discovered H&F, it became my favorite magazine. I’m not sure what the dollar value of my endorsement is, but it’s not quite that.
Anyway, I’m grateful to the editor, Matthew Giambrone, for his friendship… and also the booze. Really, you should check them out. It’s like Cardinal Newman meets Henry David Thoreau. If you enjoy this newsletter, you’ll definitely like Hearth & Field.
Peace and the Good!