Faith, Solicitude, and Living the Future Now

A Spanish phrase I became accustomed to hearing as I was growing up was ‘Me vale madre’. ‘Me vale vadre’ literally means ‘it is worth a mother to me’ which might lead you to think that this phrase is a way of showing deep concern or expressing high regard. On the contrary, ‘me vale madre’ is actually a way of saying not only do I not care right now, but also that I do not care about any of the various possible future realities that I may encounter. This low concern for future consequences and events is a trait of Mexican culture known as ‘mevalemadreismo’ and has a variety of negative expressions, like littering, drunk driving, and participation in cartel activities. Something like hauling illicit cargo for $100 instead of legal cargo for $25 would be a classic expression of ‘mevalemadreismo’ since hauling illegal loads is a known way to remove decades from your lifespan. However, this sort of low valuation of future events and consequences can also express itself in a more positive way, for example, when someone about to lose their job will simply not worry at all about their impending unemployment and will just continue to work dutifully until something else inevitably comes along. After all, they are working now and will also be working in the future. This sort of lack of concern about the future makes sense at least on a linguistic level if you reflect on the word  ‘mañana’ in Spanish. ‘Mañana’ serves simultaneously as the word for morning, tomorrow, and the indefinite future. With this sort of language architecture in your mind a tendency is fostered to conflate the time immediately surrounding the present, yesterday morning, this morning, tomorrow with the distant future. This is an underlying cognitive basis to the phenomenon of ‘mevalemadreismo’.  As a child steeped in this culture I just didn’t really get the idea of worrying about or being afraid of the future. Our Lord's order today to ‘not be afraid any longer’ or the one a few verses earlier  to ‘not to be anxious about your life or what you shall eat’ were and are effortless for me to observe. In fact they were so obvious to me as a child  I couldn’t even understand why Jesus had to even give these commands in the first place since I couldn’t even imagine worrying or being afraid of the future since that was just weird and foreign to me.College was the first time I actually lived with non-Mexicans and I noticed two things about them. The first is that they planned for things in advance. I remember being blown away by my white boy eagle scout roommate having the foresight to secure a camping permit at Yosemite 5 months before we went there. I didn’t even know that you could even reserve a spot in a national park in advance. The second is that they would actually worry about things that might happen. My Hong Kong born roommate worried that he might not be able to enroll in the honors version of an impacted class in two years time if he didn’t get a good enough grade on the next unit test. I, on the other hand, figured that in two years I would probably be doing basically the same thing,taking a class, I was doing now, taking a class, just a different one. So why worry?For the last 15 years it has been my privilege to live at St. Louis Abbey amongst my mostly Midwestern brothers and I still marvel at their ability to worry. They’ll worry about not arriving on time somewhere, starting a trip with a low level of gas, the dishwashing machine breaking down again. And honestly I kind of love them for their neuroticism.So while I have no problem obeying Jesus when he tells me not to worry, his command today to “Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks” is something I feel inclined to rebel against since how can I be a servant to someone who is not actually present. Not only is it dumb, but also impossible. However, the quality that I so appreciate in my brothers and of Midwesterners in general is their solicitude. Aquinas explains that solicitude is the diligent and attentive care needed to fulfill one’s duties correctly and on time. Solicitude is a trait needed in order to act prudently. Solicitude is a quality of character that Jesus expects of his disciples. The deficiency in solicitude is negligence and that is how ‘me vale madre’ generally manifests itself, a sort of chronic disposition of negligence that disregards the future for the sake of the present. The excess of solicitude is not a kind of quantitative excess in the sense of thinking too much about future things, rather it is a kind of qualitative excess. Aquinas distinguishes between a right solicitude—the careful effort required by virtue for the cultivation of spiritual goods —and inordinate solicitude, or anxiety, where potential future temporal things get prioritized over the present spiritual reality. This chronic sort of excess solicitude, anxiety disorder, can be a great strain for those who suffer it and it is rather widespread. I remember that during COVID there was a shortage of anxiety medications. There was also a shortage of the most effective remedy for anxiety, the infused virtue of faith, due to the whole no public Masses for weeks or months and the great restrictions on administering last rites. St. Paul describes faith as “the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” Kind of like the Spanish speaker, the person of faith establishes an identity between today and the distant future. For both of them the future and the present are the same thing. However, the person of faith lives his life now in the same way as he will live it when his master returns. The presence of his master guides his activity in the present and because it guides his activity in the present it guides his activity for all time. We see this in Abraham so clearly. All his actions are only intelligible and make sense if we assume that he had faith in God’s promises to him. He has no worries when he is called to sacrifice his son because his faith has ordered his solicitude so that he can’t worry about the present so long as he is being faithful to God. In the last parable from today’s Gospel Our Lord tells us about the “the faithful and prudent steward whom the master will put in charge of his servants.” That faithful and prudent servant is who you are called to be. You are supposed to be full of faith first. Endowed with the kind of faith that enables you to live like the saint you are called to be in the future now in this present time. Living in this future oriented way does not make you ill suited to inhabit this world, rather it lets you cultivate that solicitude that lets you fulfill all your responsibilities and duties in a balanced and orderly way. Not only that but all those worries and preoccupations that don’t exist in the future blessed life also won’t exist in the present time as well.In Christ, Fr. Athanasius Soto, O.S.B.