The Gift of Meaning (Lk 10:17ff) from a retreat reflection presented to the Daughters of Charity in Los Altos, California.

Have you ever come across people who tell you that life for them has little or no meaning — or even have you yourself gone through times when you felt something of that? Not being able to see much purpose, or lay hold of a direction, or feel taken up into something bigger. This isn’t the same as discouragement or plain feeling down, something which happens in the face of obstacles. It’s rather that feeling of being unconnected to any larger purpose, not linked to a wider and deeper reality you could give yourself to, not on board something that’s going somewhere.

By way of contrast, that’s not at all the case with Jesus and his disciples in this gospel scene (Lk. 17 ff). They are excited (rejoicing) on their return. And the reason that they, and especially Jesus, get excited is because they see themselves as part of much bigger movement, a more expansive plan.
The twelve come back from their mission thrilled because they realize they’re onto something, are plugged into a force and reality way beyond their own powers. “Lord, because of our working in Your name, even the demons are listening to us.” They come back home “rejoicing,” because they’ve picked up this sense of being part of something larger that’s really going somewhere.

But Jesus himself is even more thrilled with his flash realization that His Father’s plan is on the move, is well underway. Not only “I myself have seen Satan fall like lightning from the sky” but even more “I rejoice in the Holy Spirit, Father, that You’ve revealed these things in my followers too. I’ve now seen Your power and plan working through these others.”

What plan and what power? The one which began back in those 40 days and nights in the desert when Jesus met and struggled with Satan, and, in the Spirit, overcame him. This is just what the Father willed, that Jesus do battle with Satan and carry through on that will. What’s happening here in this episode is a successful continuation of that very same process — Jesus and his followers again “overcoming Satan,” working against the forces arrayed against his Father’s desires for this world.

And so the thrill runs through them all, especially through Jesus himself, as he looks around and sees the movement, power and presence of his dear Father breaking out all around. “At that very moment He rejoiced” — and did so in that same Spirit who was with Him in the wilderness.

Paraphrasing Jesus, “I can’t keep it in. And so I give You praise, Father, for all of this going on, this overall movement in the direction of bringing about Your Dream for the world, of accomplishing Your will “here on earth as it is in heaven.”

Of course there’s more, very much including the price Jesus and then his disciples will have to pay for proclaiming and enacting that Kingdom. But there’s also the hope running all through them that this Reign is going somewhere, not only on this particular day but off in God’s victorious future.
Our point: the last thing you could say about this little band is that they found their lives meaningless, going nowhere, on some endless treadmill. You can feel their thrill, and Jesus’ too, at being part of this grand movement toward God’s Kingdom coming to earth. And with that, you could also feel their gratitude.

How about our gratitude for this, our thanks for something which is often taken for granted? We’re part of a bigger plan. As followers of the Lord Jesus, we’ve been invited into not just the projects on our desks but into a much wider and deeper project. What we’re about is a piece of something “going somewhere.”

Martin Luther King put this notion in more poetic language when speaking to a crowd of discouraged non-violent civil rights workers. He told them to have courage, hope, perseverance. Why? Because they were not in this by themselves. Rather, he said, “the moral arc of the universe is bending toward freedom.” That is to say, there’s a bigger purpose and momentum of which we are a part. It’s not just us and our actions this particular week. The whole of creation is leaning this way, and what we are doing here is getting on board a much bigger train that’s already moving and in ways we don’t yet know. Stepping aboard will likely will mean suffering, but the fact is that the train is moving toward that final station; i.e., “Glory!”

If there ever was a speech about meaning, this was one.

This brings us to something that we disciples of Jesus (and indeed we members of the Vincentian Family) can often enough miss and take for granted. All of us are hooked onto something much bigger than ourselves and more extensive than our times. The opposite of treading water and feeling things are pointless, we in Jesus’ band are heading somewhere. His goal and his purpose is in our bones. It certainly isn’t felt every morning getting out of bed, but it’s always there as backdrop and accompaniment. It is a genuine gift to be given a task with such meaning and purpose; it’s a true grace to be called into a life that is going somewhere.

This puts all of us on that train Vincent and Louise and Frederick boarded in their own day, the one that would carry God’s love to the poor. But Luke’s gospel today would take up their efforts into that wider and much more powerful momentum in which the apostles and Jesus Himself were themselves caught up. And that is the breaking in and setting up of the Kingdom of Jesus’ Father.

This story began with those 40 long days in that Judean desert, Jesus wrestling with the forces arrayed against His Father. It continues in today’s gospel in that flash point of recognition Jesus has about what’s going on around and in him. And it moves on through time to all of us now, cooperators with Jesus in bringing about His Father’s Dream for the world. St. Ignatius expresses this famously with his term “Companions of Jesus,” people working along with the Worker-God as that God is at work in the world.

Meaning and purpose – indeed, gifts of the Kingdom.