Happy Are The Ignorant

As a child I remember having a weary thought of being forced to eat all the food I would eat in my lifetime in one sitting. A nauseating notion.

There is a reason alcoholics and those in recovery need to take things "one day at a time" (or sometimes one hour or one minute at a time). There is a reason why we pray in the Lord's Prayer "give us our daily bread." Some things are not meant to be known, and we are better off left seeing through a glass darkly (1 Cor 13:12). 

Thomas Kempis tells the story of a man who doubted whether he was in a state of grace and prayed to know whether he would persevere in virtue to the end of his life. The Lord answered him:

"What would you do now if you knew you should persevere? Do now as you would do then and you will be saved."

We are not called to know...we are called to trust. Knowing implies certainty based on data, while trust involves itself with love based in faith. Thankfully, in our lives of faith, we are given little tastes of both--knowing that God exists undeniably when we encounter Him in moments of grace, and trusting Him when He removes Himself from our purview. 

But even when He removes Himself, it is for our ultimate good, for the blinding white of transfiguration burns the human eye. He places himself under guise of bread to build up our faith. He visits us under guise of the poor to test and increase our charity. He conceals the hand of Providence while supplying our need. He hides his motives and reasons for seeming misfortune because "such knowledge is too wonderful for me;" it is high, and we cannot reach it (Ps 139:6). 

I often get very discouraged in writing. Though I do it for the Kingdom (and so as not to bury my talents that I have been charged with, lest I suffer the consequences), nothing seems to make a difference; it's pointless; the labor is hard, the harvest great, and the workers few. Like Job, I lament:

“Why do the wicked still live,

Continue on, also become very powerful?

“Their descendants are established with them in their sight,

And their offspring before their eyes,

Their houses are safe from fear,

And the rod of God is not on them." (Job 21:7-8)

At the heart of it, I want to know. I want to know that I am making a difference. I want to know I am doing the right thing. I want to know I am pleasing God. I want to know I will be saved. 

And yet, what if I did know? The Lord gives the answer:

Do now as you would do then and you will be saved."

We are called to be like the virgins staying awake with oil in their lamps (Mt 25); like the faithful servants who work not knowing when their master will return (Lk 12:45). If the angels in Heaven don't even know the day or hour when the end of days will occur (Mt 24:36), why should we expect to? 

God made our bodies for a reason to be used in accordance with their nature. He gave us our intellect and reason to be used within its confines. He gave us the longing for Heaven and the limits of friendship to draw us closer to Him. There is nothing created or made by accident--and that includes the finitude of our knowledge of heavenly things. 

Knowledge is a good and gift of the Holy Spirit, but not an absolute. Willful ignorance, likewise, is not a virtue; but neither is curiosity or presumption. We are called as a work of mercy to instruct the ignorant when it involves the truth of things. 

But no more can you force a five year old to start driving, or a teenager to know all there is about death and taxes, can you contain all the multitudes of heaven and grace in a single sitting. We are portioned it for our good, kept in the dark when need be (which is most of the time), refined and tested by fire so that we might become as gold. We may not understand the purgations we go through, or comprehend our blurred vision of the heavenly realm now...but maybe it is because we are not supposed to. 

God has us set at this time and place to work out our salvation in fear and trembling, and His ways are a mystery to us for good reason. If I knew my reach, and if you knew yours, we may be met with a darker fate steeped in pride and presumption. I'll take ignorance in that case--not the willful kind that refuses to see the truth and be held to account for it, but the kind that is content with a bag of mystery steeped in the tea of unknowing.