A New, Old "Enough"

In my working life, I was worried I could not do enough.  When I stopped working, the same word troubled me, but now it was fear that I would not have enough.  Sunday was the feast of Corpus Christi, the reminder that we are fed by the Body of Christ, not simply the round, white wafer, but the water-to-wine, loaves-and-fishes, in-the-flesh reminders that Dios solo basta . . . God alone is enough.

There was that phrase – God alone is enough­ – mentioned almost incidentally by Fr. Reuben Munoz, our sweet, smiling, beguiling assistant pastor from Colombia, holding up a coffee cup.  To engage us in his homilies, he often brings something that he was given on his last trip home, using it to motivate us to answer questions, to get involved in discussion of the Gospel.  He had spoken about the problem faced by the disciples, a large crowd of people that remained listening to Jesus through what should have been a meal time.  One of them asked Jesus how they were going to feed all those people.  Jesus replied “Give them something yourselves!”  I confess I’d forgotten this line in my leap to what follows, the “miracle” of multiplication of loaves and fishes, the feeding of the multitude from no apparent source.

Dios solo basta; I remember the first time I heard it.  Evelyn Coffey (Click for a link to her Cousin Pat Kyser’s blog about her) was a sweetly smiling, white-haired mystic, who shared this phrase with me once as we sat on her front porch, musing about life.  When she said the three words, she said them as if they were a secret which I was privileged to know, that others did not, and how lucky we were, we two there on that porch on Warrington Street.  I confessed to her that I did not know what it meant, afraid that she might think less of me.  “Oh, it’s from St. Therese of Avila,” she said, and recited:

Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things pass away:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
He who has God
Finds he lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.

Here in retirement, I have no job from which to earn a weekly paycheck.  We draw from a finite amount of money saved, that might or might not be . . . enough.  I grew up on the edge of poverty; my father a factory worker in a post-war economy of boom and recession, our family often growing faster than his ability to earn.  I was formed with a habit of saving, of conserving, preparing for the times when there would be nothing coming in.  And now in retirement, I relapse to this feeling of insufficiency, and it becomes a source of fear, fear that displaces love and repels joy.

So there at Mass was Fr. Reuben holding up the coffee cup, reading the words on it, the words of Theresa of Avila, holding it high so that we would see it, would want it, would speak up for it, telling what we heard in the Gospel, in his homily.  As I remembered Evelyn and that secret shared on her porch, tears broke free from my eyes and ran down my face.  I wanted to raise my hand and tell the story of hearing those words, of her sweet smile . . . but my weeping would make my story inaudible, I knew, and I sat in silence, deeply aware of Evelyn’s reminder, that God does suffice, without anything else.  Throughout the Mass I felt relieved of worry; how could I have forgotten Evelyn’s sweet secret again and again? 

At the final blessing, Fr. Reuben retrieved a monstrance from the side table and brought it to the altar.  From the tabernacle he retrieved a little gold vessel; bringing it to the altar, he opened it and placed the consecrated host within it into the monstrance.  Without a cue, the congregation knelt as he held it up high so that we would see it, would want it, would speak up for it, would know that this alone, this little white wafer that is the Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ, the water-to-wine, loaves-and-fishes, flesh-and-blood reminder that this alone is enough.  The ancient monstrance here in this new place; Fr. Reuben's new smile reminding me of Evelyn's one of beloved memory: the continuity of God's love and the simplicity of this message embraced me.  

Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things pass away:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
He who has God
Finds he lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.

Tomorrow: Take…break…bless…share – looking at living with the "enough" that we are given.

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.