Ask for the Ancient Paths

The good way may not be another path forward, but the ancient poverty of standing before God without needing to become anything

“Stand by the roads, and look,

and ask for the ancient paths,

where the good way is; and walk in it,

and find rest for your souls.”

— Jeremiah 6:16

There is something easily overlooked in Jeremiah’s words.

Before the walking comes the standing.

Stand by the roads, and look.

We are often too frightened to do this.

When one road ends, we immediately search for another. When a vocation becomes uncertain, we seek another form of vocation. When an identity begins to disappear, we construct another identity before the first has even been buried.

We call this discernment.

Sometimes it is.

Sometimes it is fear.

The heart cannot bear to be without a future it can name.

And so we ask God to show us the road when perhaps He is first asking us to stand still.

The desert fathers understood this severity.

They fled a world filled with roads.

There were positions to occupy, arguments to win, ministries to accomplish, reputations to establish, even holy things to achieve.

They went into the desert and discovered something terrible:

the self can use God to escape God.

We can make a vocation out of our fear of being nothing.

We can make ministry out of our fear of silence.

We can make usefulness out of our fear of being loved without being needed.

We can even make discernment into a way of refusing the poverty of the present moment.

The ancient path is narrower.

It begins when a man stops asking,

What am I going to become?

and begins asking,

Can I remain before God here?

Not tomorrow.

Here.

Not once everything has been resolved.

Here.

Not when I understand what my life means.

Here.

This is harder than choosing a road.

Because choosing gives us something to do.

Standing exposes us.

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There comes a time in the spiritual life when even good things must loosen their hold upon the heart.

Not because they were false.

Because they were gifts.

Priesthood can be a gift.

Ministry can be a gift.

Teaching can be a gift.

Community can be a gift.

The love and trust of others can be a gift.

Even the sense of having been called by God into a particular form of life can be a gift.

But a gift is not God.

And eventually every gift must be held with open hands.

There is a terrible temptation when the familiar shape of life begins to disappear.

Gather the fragments.

Build again.

Find another place where the old self can survive under a different name.

Become useful again.

Become necessary again.

Find some ecclesial structure that will tell you who you are.

There may indeed be another work.

There may be another ministry.

There may even be another form of priestly service.

But these things belong to God.

They must not be seized simply because emptiness frightens us.

The fathers would say:

Stay in the cell.

Do not run because the silence has become unbearable.

Do not mistake movement for obedience.

⸻

Perhaps this is why the words of Jeremiah have become so severe for me.

Ask for the ancient paths.

The ancient path is not novelty.

But neither is it nostalgia.

It is older than the identities we have constructed around our faith.

It is Abraham leaving without knowing where he was going.

It is Moses removing his sandals.

It is Elijah discovering that God was not in the wind, the earthquake, or the fire.

It is Mary saying, Let it be to me according to your word.

It is John decreasing.

It is Christ entering the wilderness.

It is the monk remaining in his cell when every thought tells him to flee.

The ancient path is poverty before God.

Listen.

Pray.

Abide.

Receive.

Repent.

Love the person placed before you.

Do not demand tomorrow.

This is terribly small.

Perhaps that is why we resist it.

We would rather have a mission.

⸻

There is something within me now that longs for a place where I might simply be a Christian before God.

Not immediately a teacher.

Not immediately a pastor.

Not someone whose years of experience must quickly be made useful again.

Not someone who must learn another way of functioning so that he can acquire another role.

Simply a man standing in the Church.

Listening.

Praying.

Receiving.

Learning again how to bow.

Learning again how to repent.

Saying the Name.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.

This poverty draws me more powerfully than the promise of another future.

And yet even here vigilance is necessary.

For the heart can make an identity out of poverty.

It can make an identity out of the desert.

It can even take the thing it loves most and use it to escape the nakedness of standing before God.

Therefore nothing may be grasped.

Not even the ancient path.

One asks for it.

One receives it.

One walks when God gives the step.

⸻

I used to imagine that obedience would gradually reveal the meaning of my life.

Perhaps sometimes it does.

But there may be another obedience.

An obedience in which God removes the need to know what one’s life means.

The road disappears.

The map becomes useless.

The names by which one understood oneself grow strangely quiet.

And what remains?

A room.

A person who needs you.

A prayer rope.

Scripture.

Bread.

Weariness.

Mercy.

The Name of Jesus.

God.

This does not look like a vocation.

Perhaps that is because it is something deeper.

It is life.

Not the life we planned.

Not the life we thought we were meant to live.

The life that remains when we can no longer use our calling to protect ourselves from the mystery of God.

⸻

Jeremiah says that the ancient path brings rest to the soul.

But the rest does not come because we finally know where everything is going.

The rest comes when we no longer need to.

This is the strange mercy hidden in the desert.

God may not tell us what comes next.

He may give no explanation for what has been taken away.

He may leave unanswered the questions that once seemed necessary for faithfulness.

And still He says:

Stand.

Look.

Ask.

Then walk.

Not ten years.

Not even ten steps.

The step given today.

Care for the one before you.

Say your prayers.

Tell the truth.

Do not seize tomorrow.

Remain.

And when the old fear rises again—

What will become of me?

perhaps there is finally only one answer:

I do not know.

God knows.

God is.

I am before Him.

And for today,

that is enough.