ζητώ

Try this word ζητώ

This Third Saturday of Lent was spent with about 30 other old men. Some a lot older, some not so much older and probably three other men who are still in their forties. We were all at church for the annual men’s retreat.

It was really a Day of Recollection as it started Friday evening and ended on Saturday at noon. We got to go home to our own beds at night. Just a partial escape from daily life.

It was a good time as the priest presiding over the activities was excellent. His name is Rick Ganz, SJ, a highly educated Jesuit with a great innate skill of relating stories about faith, tradition and life. He is glad to be a Catholic and it shows.

The theme of the retreat was simply “How do I know what is God’s will for me?” It is a more complicated answer that is made up of more questions. What is God’s will? What is my will? How do I know the difference? Why won’t God just tell me what to do? Did I miss what God told me to do? And on and on.

One of the words Father Rick referred to in the discussion is the Greek word ζητώ. The pronunciation as best I could find online: zito. It means ‘to seek’. Father embellished the meaning to ‘seek ardently’.

As Father talked about ‘seeking ardently’, I thought of my children and where they are in their lives. Each of them is seeking ardently but from different stages in life and with different views of the world.

My daughter is busy reestablishing herself in America after a year in Germany and also starting her own business in landscape design. A lot of changes in her life over the last year and half have caused her great joy, challenged her beyond her wildest dreams and helped her become an ardent seeker of… God knows what and soon my daughter will know too as each day unfolds.

My son is near the end of that wonderful time in his life where he realizes that his dad has learned a lot in the last eight years, ala Mark Twain. Not to mention the fact that he has learned a lot. He is seeking what we all seek at some point in our youth, the answer to “Who am I?” And he is getting closer each day. Looking for work in a slow economy is no fun and often disheartening. But he continues and is checking into the JobCorps as a viable route for schooling and job skills that make sense to him.

So Father Rick uses the word ζητώas a beautiful description of our seeking. Whatever my children are seeking or what I am seeking, it all comes down to "How do I know what is God’s will for me?”