In itself, the plea need not be desperate, but it is ardent — full of genuine desire. It proceeds not from any essential imperfection or defect in the structure of the created person, but precisely from a personal fullness that is drawn into the ecstasy of self-giving and a more profound receptivity. It is the plea of created love for a word from Uncreated Love. It is, as St. Augustine indicates, an “emptiness” superior to any finite fullness, a longing for the Infinite that is in itself sweeter and more satisfying than the possession of all finite things. It waits upon the freedom of God.
This waiting shapes the attitude of human beings toward life and suffuses all of their activity to the degree that they recognizes the mysterious truth that things in the world and even other created persons — with all of their charm, beauty, intricacy, and diverse riches and with all of their disappointing limits — are signs that point beyond themselves to the Infinite Beauty and Inexhaustible Fullness Who is their source.
Thus for the mature human person, for the wise person, an attitude of prayer, of poverty of spirit, of “waiting upon the Lord” radically defines the way he or she faces the whole of life even down to its humblest details. Every reality, for created persons, awakens, sustains, and deepens their fascination and reverence for the Divine Mystery and places them before that Mystery with open hands, with readiness to receive any Divine gift.
This is the summit of human dignity: to wait upon the Lord.
~excerpt from The Created Person and the Mystery of God (First Books, 2003) by John Janaro. Available here.
