Robert Barron - Go in Haste, Be Astonished, Treasure
Peace be with you. Happy New Year's Day, in the secular sense, but also the Feast of Mary, the Mother of God, on this January 1st. There are three words from our Gospel, it's from Luke, I've always loved. These three words I want to reflect on. The first one is haste, the second one is astonished, the third one is treasured; haste, astonished and treasured. Luke tells us the shepherds went in haste to Bethlehem and found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in the manger. Haste. The angels told them something. This message came from another world, from on high. And they were given a task. They were sent on mission. And, by God, they went, they moved.
Remember, of course, in the same Gospel, we hear that Mary, after the Annunciation, went in haste, same word, to visit her cousin Elizabeth. She'd been given a message from a higher world. She'd been given a sense of mission, and then she moved. Think of the three wise men, that's in Matthew's Gospel. They see the star, and then despite all the difficulties, despite all the obstacles, they moved. The Bible is a book of missions. Nobody in the Bible, there's no exception, nobody in the Bible is ever given an experience of God without being concomitantly and consequently sent.
If God appears, God reveals something, the higher world breaks through, the proper response is not, "Oh, let me just stay here and look at that". No, no. The proper response is, "Now, go," because you're meant to be a bearer of the beauty of that manifestation to others. That's the basic biblical intuition. Hans Urs von Balthasar, the great twentieth-century theologian, said that beauty has that quality.
If you see something beautiful, you hear something beautiful, a symphony or whatever, it seizes you and then it sends you as an apostle, apostellein means to send. It sends you out on a mission to tell others about it. It's true, isn't it? The truly beautiful, we don't just sit alone with it. No. We allow it to act, as it were, through us, and we become its messengers to the wider world. This is true now of all of us baptized people. We've all been given a mission. John Henry Newman said we've all been made for a definite purpose. We've all been given a particular task, and I want everybody listening to me right now to think about that. You're not just dumbly here or a result of a cosmic accident. No, no. You've been willed into existence by God.
Why did he create you? Because he's got a mission for you. Hey, it might not be what the world thinks is important. Who cares? Who cares? That's, by the way, a great biblical theme is people get distracted by, "Oh, the world thinks this is so important". Who cares? It means nothing. What does God think is important for you? What's your mission from God? It might be the quietest thing. Think now of the Little Flower, right, and the "little way". It's little in the eyes of the world, but great in the eyes of God. Now, here's the point. Once you understand what that is, move, act. Don't procrastinate. Don't fall asleep. Don't dawdle around. Move, go in haste. Don't waste time. Life is short, and the mission is clear. Move in haste, everybody. Be about the work the Lord has given you to do, okay?
Here's the second word I love from this passage: "astonished". It says, "All those who heard the shepherds' story of the angels were astonished by it". It's true, and the Bible says this, that God is found in ordinary things, ordinary people and places and events. That's true. God speaks through nature. The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The natural things that happen to us in this life, yeah, we say God speaks through those. True enough, but at the heart of biblical religion is something beyond that.
See, because that can be true of any religion or any mysticism or any religious philosophy, right? We could all agree, yeah, that ultimate reality speaks to us through the things of this world. Sure, sure. But there's more to biblical religion than that, because at the heart of the Bible is this claim that God has broken through into the natural order. God has disclosed something of himself to us that we would not normally know. The way that when you come to know a person. I mean, you can learn a lot about the person just by watching and maybe studying a little bit and looking that person up on Wikipedia or Google or something. But finally, that person has to open her heart to you and reveal something that you would never have known otherwise.
See, that's the revelation that has to be at the heart of any really deep human relationship. Now, a fortiori, to the nth degree, this is true of our relationship to God. Yes, we can know certain things about God through the natural order and through history, but finally, God speaks himself to us. And you know what that's like, everybody? That's astonishing. I know, sunsets are beautiful and they speak of God. I get it. I get it. Sure, true. But when God speaks his own mind and heart in a way that we would never have guessed otherwise, that's astonishing. When he reveals his will and purpose to us in this personal way that we would never otherwise have known, the proper response is amazement and astonishment.
I've always loved this in G.K. Chesterton. He made a contrast between depictions of the Buddha, where the Buddha has his eyes closed in meditation, and then, says, Chesterton, the statues on the outside of Chartres Cathedral. Those figures, and it's true, look them up on the web if you want to check it, those figures aren't meditating with eyes closed. No, they've got their eyes wide open. Why? Because they're looking at something that came to them from the outside, something they found so surprising and astonishing that it changed them forever and sent them on a mission. That's the right, it seems to me, ordinary response to the revelation of God.
Third word. So haste, astonishment. Third word is "treasured". Listen, "Mary", and it's her great feast day today, Mary, the Mother of God, "Mary treasured these things and reflected on them in her heart". What things? These astonishing things. Think of the angel appearing to Mary, how astounding that was. And it caused her to go and haste to visit her cousin. Think how astonished she must have been when she heard the message from these shepherds about their angelic encounter. Think how shocked she must have been by the visit of the wise men, of these magi coming from long, far away to worship this new King. I mean, how would she have understood that?
Well, the marvelous thing is that she treasured them in her heart and reflected upon them. If you read Shakespeare, I'm a big Shakespeare fan, I don't know how many versions of Hamlet I've seen in the course of my life. I've seen several live, and then I've watched many others on film. Why would you do that? You think, "Well, look, didn't you read it once, and you got it? That's Hamlet. Hey, I saw one production of it. Wouldn't that be sufficient"? Well, yeah, it would be for some tawdry little nothing play. You're not going to go see the sixth-grade play over and over and over again. But Hamlet or Macbeth or King Lear, there's such richness in it that you could never take it in one viewing. No, you want to go back again and again.
And in fact, you want to see different actors do it because the different actors bring out different aspects of the character. You want to read it again and again as you move through your own life. It's true, isn't it? As you move through your own life, your reading of great works of art changes because you are maturing in different ways, and you're able to see and take in things. Heck, I first read Romeo and Juliet when I was fourteen. We read it in freshmen English class at Fenwick High School. And the teacher just had various ones of us read some of the parts. I didn't understand any of it. I mean, I maybe got 10% of it.
Okay, I was fourteen. I've read it and watched it, the course of my life, savoring it. Or think of Beethoven's symphonies, which I love, especially the Ninth. I probably was a teenager when I first heard it. I was astonished by it. That's true. I was, from the beginning. I remember when I first heard the Ode to Joy in the fourth movement, and I knew that that hymn. I mean, we call it the Ode to Joy or the Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee. "Oh, there's that hymn from church".
I didn't realize it came from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. But it's so fascinating to me that I kept going back to it again and again. I would buy different versions of it, listen to different orchestras and conductors. One of the highlights of my life, I really mean this, was years ago when I was a student in Europe. I went to Vienna one time and was able to get in, it was just a standing-room-only ticket. I was just a young guy, didn't have much money. Standing in the back of this great symphony hall in Vienna, and it was the Vienna Philharmonic, and they were playing Beethoven's 9th Symphony. It was one of the great moments of my life to be there in this sort of capital of music.
My point here, everybody, I hope you're not finding it too tired, really great works of art, really great and beautiful things, we don't just say, "Oh yeah, it's great. Terrific," and then move on. No, no. After that original astonishment, now we treasure, we savor, we mull over, we draw out the implications. We see different aspects. John Henry Newman said that Mary treasuring the great mysteries of Christmas in her heart becomes the patroness of all theology. It's a marvelous insight. I spent a lot of my life as a theology teacher and writer. That's what theology is, the Church up and down the ages, treasuring and mulling over and reflecting upon the astonishing events of salvation.
So haste, move. If God has broken into your life in some decisive way, you've been given your mission, don't worry about what the world says. Don't worry about that. Don't get hung up on your own limitations. Move, act, go. When God manifests himself, the right response is astonishment. And then savor, treasure, reflect upon these astonishing things in your heart. I think in all these ways, everybody, we honor Mary, above all, the Mother of God. And God bless you.