On a cloudy day that threatened rain, I was about to leave a friend’s home. I stood in his doorway, in what you might call a threshold. Behind me was the dry safety of his living room; ahead was the uncertainty of the weather. 

The question: whether to take that step outside? Whether or not to trust my sense that it was not going to rain? More generally, whether in any threshold situation to move forward or to stay.  

The scene has a connection with a line from the Prophet, Jeremiah, whose words raise a similar issue: the trust in God that’s needed for taking those kinds of threshold steps.  

The text is this: “As Israel comes forward to be given his rest, the Lord appears to him from afar.” 

Jeremiah portrays God’s chosen people, the Israelites, stepping out from safety to stand in a threshold and look toward an unknown land. They ask themselves, “Can we trust enough to take this step?” And when they do decide to move forward, they hear God say, “With age-old love, I have loved you.” 

Over the years, how many threshold moments have we Vincentians faced? Inside what thresholds might we be standing in the present day? What decisions of trust are being set out there before us? 

How firmly can we trust that the Lord, in some way or other, is summoning us to make a move? Not necessarily calling us from close by but also, as Jeremiah relates, “appearing to us from afar.” And not just appearing but summoning us with that “age-old love.” 

It’s a lesson from this Prophet about the virtue and risk of hope, a quality that might well be imaged as the summons in the doorway. Or better, the “Threshold Virtue.” 

In a letter written on Good Friday, Vincent uses a nautical analogy to encourage one of his priests to step out more trustingly into God’s own future.  

In the name of God, Monsieur, let us have greater Confidence in Him than we do; let us allow Him to steer our little bark; if it is useful and pleasing to Him, He will save it from shipwreck. 

 (Volume: 4 | Page#: 347) To Achille Le Vazeux, Assistant, In Rome, Good Friday, 1652 added on 6/28/2011.