Worth the Wait
THE ANTECHAMBER OF MERCY
Imagine you receive an invitation to the wedding feast of the king to take place in the royal ballroom! You’re deeply touched by the invitation and you happily accept.
So, you make your way on horseback to the courts of His Majesty. After a long journey, you finally arrive. Some of the servants offer to care for your horse, before bringing you to an antechamber, the waiting area.
Hearing the other guests celebrating inside, your heart beats with eager longing, but you are not yet ready to enter. Your journey was long and the road dusty. Your wedding garment is soiled and must be purified.
Other servants come to your assistance, but seemingly make no haste. You resist the urge to rush them, as their gentleness implies there is no need for that. In fact, something quite other than hurry is in their eyes.
“Try to wait,” one says to you, assisting the purgation of your clothing with a touch. “Try to wait.”
“When will I be ready to enter?” you ask, fearing any hint of desperation may betray ingratitude for the invitation. Nor do you press the servants, who are aglow with the life of the king himself, suggesting they know well your heart and the ways of His Majesty’s own.
They don’t respond. Instead, they continue about their work. “I’m sorry,” you say to the servants, “I’ll try to wait,” until you are given to understand that they serve only to comfort you; it is the waiting that is accomplishing your purification for entry into the feast.
OUR UNNATURAL TIMES
Purgatory is hard to imagine, but we should try, especially since the one quality of its character we do know about is the thing we find most difficult to do in this age.
We do not like waiting. Well, in any case, we’re not good at it, which is obvious; in this age of invention we’ve all but eliminated the need to wait for anything.
There was a time we waited for the seeds to germinate, the rains to fall, the sun to shine, and the plants to bear fruit. Some still do, but most of us go to the supermarket and complain about the checkout line.
We get frustrated with shipping delays, abhor traffic, and have all but abandoned television for the convenience of binge-streaming. We wait for nothing.
No wonder the suffering of purgatory is so much on our conscience these days, like a punishment the child sees coming while returning home from school. We are full of guilt for allowing ourselves to have become so alienated from the thing happening everywhere else in the natural world, which is essential for growth, namely, waiting.
*Sidenote: I had to take a break from writing this just now, because I accidentally brewed coffee in my Keurig without putting a mug under the spout - coffee everywhere! I should have taken the time to go to the kitchen to make a cup like a natural human being, but, because I’m rushing, I chose not to wait, which has made it even harder for me to make the bulletin deadline. Just saying.
WORTH THE WAIT
We’ll talk more about this at Mass and on the podcast, but I did want to write about the importance of waiting, because I wouldn’t want us to think that the “waiting” we hear so often associated with purgatory is arbitrary or merely punitive. If that antechamber to heaven really is, as the Church teaches, the place where God’s mercy tempers His justice, then there must be something to be gained by the experience of waiting offered to us in this life. Maybe we shouldn’t be so afraid of it or resent it. Maybe we should welcome it, and grow in it. +