“I suppose she’s intelligent enough…”
The voice I overheard was talking about me.
I recognized the speaker, as I had given her an ill-fated ride the day before. And yes, it’s true, I have what seems to be a genetic propensity for getting lost. At least I call it genetic. (Anne Tyler, in The Accidental Tourist, called the condition “geographical dyslexia.”) On the other hand, some people think that if I just concentrated, I wouldn’t have the problem at all. And others, like the owner of the voice speaking above, simply take my inability to navigate as a sign of mental deficiency.
Symptoms:
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I have been known to drive for a half hour on the interstate in the wrong direction.
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The words, “You can’t miss it,” send me into quivers.
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After giving up searching and telephoning for directions, I have had to admit that I had no idea where I was calling from (seriously hindering the direction-giver).
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I find highway signs woefully inadequate, disappearing just when I need then.
On the spiritual journey, however, there is a sense in which most of us, left to our own devices, are directionally challenged. The way is fraught with puzzling intersections and foggy back roads and trackless wastelands where we long for a GPS or a printout from Mapquest.
But happily, and often in spite of ourselves, we are being led, even when the haze appears so dense or the night so obscure that we can’t see our hands before our faces. And amazingly enough, we are being guided not just to where we ought to be, but to where we want to be.
The beautiful Latin verses of St. Thomas Aquinas, which we know as “Panis Angelicus,” end with this prayer:
Per tuas semitas
Duc nos quo tendimus,
Ad lucem quam inhabitas.
“Lead us,” we pray, “along your paths…” —
Lead us through everything:
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through interior struggles, through joy and pain, through knowledge and unknowing…
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through prayer, in the body and blood of Christ (panis angelicus: bread of angels), to the divine life of Christ that we receive and are called to live…
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from indifference to love, from judging to compassion, from violence to peace…
Lead us along your paths, because our own roads tend to get us lost.
“Lead us where we want to go,” continues the prayer, in the direction we are already leaning, if we are paying attention to our heart’s longing.
Lead us “to the light wherein you dwell.”
Where we are being led is indeed where we want to be. The goodness of God leads us, not to some desolate wasteland where we will still be wandering around hunting for a highway marker, nor even to a faraway or foreign land, but to the very place for which we were made and for which our hearts long: to the Light that is God’s dwelling and our home.
You show me the path of life.
In your presence there is fullness of joy;
in your right hand are pleasures for evermore.
(Psalm 16:11)
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P.S. There are many renditions of Cesar Franck’s “Panis Angelicus” on YouTube, performed by the likes of Luciano Pavarotti, Leontyne Price, and Placido Domingo. Unfortunately, Franck’s version uses only one verse of Aquinas’ hymn, omitting the words cited above.