Watch and pray: that should be the warrior of light's motto. If he only watches, he will start to see ghosts where they don't exist. If he only prays, he will not have time to carry out the work that the world so desperately needs. According to another legend, this time from the Verba Seniorum, the abbot pastor used to say that Abbot John had prayed so much that he need no longer worry - all his passions had been vanquished.
The abbot pastor's words reached the ears of one of the wise men in the Monastery of Sceta. He called together the novices after supper.
'You may have heard it said that Abbot John has no more temptations to conquer,' he said. 'However, a lack of struggle weakens the soul. Let us ask the Lord to send Abbot John a great temptation, and if he manages to conquer it, let us ask the Lord to send him another, and another. And when he is once more struggling against temptations, let us pray that he may never say: "Lord, remove this demon from me." Let us pray that he asks: "Lord, give me strength to confront evil."'
In Miami Harbour
'Sometimes, people get so used to what they see in films that they end up forgetting the real story,' says a friend, as we stand together looking out over Miami harbour. 'Do you remember The Ten Commandments?'
'Of course I do. At one point, Moses - Charlton Heston - lifts up his rod, the waters part, and the children of Israel cross over.'
'In the Bible it's different,' says my friend. 'There, God says to Moses: "Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward." And only afterwards does he tell Moses to lift up his rod, and then the Red Sea parts. It is only courage on the path itself that makes the path appear.'
Acting on Impulse
Father Zeca, from the Church of the Resurrection in Copacabana, tells of how, when he was travelling once on a bus, he suddenly heard a voice telling him to get up and preach the word of Christ right there and then.
Zeca started talking to the voice: 'They'll think I'm ridiculous. This isn't the place for a sermon,' he said. But something inside him insisted that he speak. 'I'm too shy, please don't ask me to do this,' he begged.
The inner impulse insisted.
Then he remembered his promise - to surrender himself to all Christ's purposes. He got up, cringing with embarrassment, and began to talk about the Gospel. Everyone listened in silence. He looked at each passenger in turn, and very few looked away. He said everything that was in his heart, ended his sermon, and sat down again.
He still does not know what task he fulfilled that day, but he is absolutely certain that he did fulfil a task.
Transitory Glory
Sic transit gloria mundi. That is how St Paul defines the human condition in one of his Epistles: 'Thus passes away the glory of the world.' And yet, knowing this, we all set off in search of recognition for our work. Why? One of Brazil's greatest poets, Vinicius de Moraes, says in the words to a song:
E no entanto e preciso cantar,
mais que nunca e preciso cantar.
[And meanwhile, we must sing,
more than ever, we must sing.]
Gertrude Stein said that, 'A rose is a rose is a rose', but Vinicius de Moraes says only that we must sing. Brilliant. He gives no explanations, no justifications, and uses no metaphors. When I stood for the Brazilian Academy of Letters, I went through the ritual of getting in touch with the other members, and one academician, Josue Montello, said something rather similar. He told me: 'Everyone has a duty to follow the road that passes through his or her village.'
Why? What is there along that road?
What is the force that propels us far from the comfort of all that is familiar and makes us face challenges, even though we know that the glory of the world will pass away?
I believe that this impulse is the search for the meaning of life.
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For many years, I sought a definitive answer to this question in books, in art, in science, in the many dangerous and comfortable roads I have travelled. I found many answers, some of which lasted me for years, and others that failed to withstand even a single day's analysis; and yet none of them was strong enough for me to be able to say: this is the meaning of life.
Now I am convinced that the answer will never be vouchsafed to us in this life, but that, at the end, when we stand once more before the Creator, we will understand each opportunity that was offered to us, which we either accepted or rejected.
In a sermon of 1890, the pastor Henry Drummond speaks of this encounter with the Creator. He says:
The test of man then is not, 'How have I believed?' but 'How have I loved?' The final test of religion is not religiousness, but love: not what I have done, not what I have believed, not what I have achieved, but how I have discharged the common charities of life. Sins of commission in that awful indictment are not even referred to. By what we have not done, by sins of omission, we are judged. It could not be otherwise. For the withholding of love is the negation of the Spirit of Christ, the proof that we never knew Him, that for us He lived in vain.
The glory of the world is transitory, and we cannot measure our lives by it, only by the decision we make to follow our personal legend, to believe in our utopias, and to fight for them. Each of us is the protagonist of our own life, and often it is the anonymous heroes who leave the most enduring marks.
A Japanese legend tells how a certain monk, filled with enthusiasm for the beauty of the Chinese book, the Tao te Ching, decided to raise enough money to translate and publish it in his own language. This took him ten years.