1-30-20 - The Faithful Widow

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

Today we meet one of my favorite people in all the Gospels – Anna. She was the next person the holy family encountered in the Temple that day:

There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband for seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshipped there with fasting and prayer night and day. At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

Anna is yet another witness confirming what the angel told Mary and Joseph about their firstborn. Simeon recognizes him as the salvation of his people Israel; Anna speaks about him to all who were looking for Jerusalem's redemption.

Anna was widowed at a young age, and did not remarry. Perhaps her widowhood freed her to put all her focus on her relationship with God, fasting and praying in the temple, a proto-nun. We might wonder at her choice – was she just hiding? Should she have engaged the world outside more? But some people find their greatest joy in turning full-faced to God, nurturing a relationship with enough complexity to hold us for eternity. And out of that relationship they have more to give to those with whom they cross paths.

I have known people like Anna, who have suffered great loss and endured years of stress, and have become wise and beautiful, like polished stones, tempered steel, purified gold. I’ve known others whom loss has wizened and withered, turned in upon themselves and against the world. Anna, and those like her, turned to God in her loss, finding her life in God’s life. She allowed God to transform her loss into wisdom, to release in her the gift of prophecy, a holy ability to see the unseen and speak God's truth.

It’s not fun to think about our losses, but what comes to your mind when you think of great loss in your life? Maybe it’s one you’re dreading now. What was or is its effect on you? Where is God in that unfolding? Are there gifts you can name that have arisen in you because of that loss?

Maybe the pain is still acute, still fresh. Sometimes it is, even if much time has passed. 

Invite Jesus into that pain, to sit with you in it. Invite the Spirit to work it with you, like clay on a wheel, to bring something of beauty out of death and loss.

There's no one recipe for how to do that. I know it can happen; I’ve seen it, in people who turned God-ward in their grief and loss. And gradually, gradually, one day, like Anna, we look up and find ourselves face to face with God.

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