On the Prowl

In his 1979 theological memoir Christianity Rediscovered, Fr. Vincent J. Donavan reflects on a conversation he once had with a Masai elder, to whom he had been witnessing as a missionary for some time. Donavan is a Roman Catholic, and the two work out together how the tribe, as a tribe, might do things like Eucharist, naming and baptism in a manner true to their context as a non-Westernized African tribe. In one of their conversations, the elder and Donavan take up and debate the word "faith." Donavan writes:

"[The Masai elder] said for a man really to believe is like a lion going after its prey. His nose and eyes and ears pick up the prey. His legs give him the speed to catch it. All the power of his body is involved in the terrible death leap and single blow to the neck with the front paw, the blow that actually kills. And as the animal goes down the lion envelops it in his arms [...] pulls it to himself, and makes it part of himself. This is the way a lion kills. This is the way a man believes. This is what faith is.

I looked at the elder in silence and amazement … But my wise old teacher was not finished yet.  "We did not search you out, Padri," he said to me. "We did not even want you to come to us. You searched us out. You followed us away from your house into the bush, into the plains, into the steppes where our cattle are, into the hills where we take our cattle for water, into our villages, into our homes. You told us of the High God, how we must search for him, even leave our land and our people to find him. But we have not done this. We have not left our land. We have not searched for [God]. [God] has searched for us. [God] has searched us out and found us. All the time we think we are the lion. In the end, the lion is God."

This is where Jesus is in this week's Gospel reading - God on the prowl.  God trailing the scent.  God, ready to pounce.