Archivo Fotográfico Universidad de Navarra / Wikimedia Commons
CV NEWS FEED // In a recent pastoral letter, Bishop Erik Varden, Apostolic Administrator of the Prelature of Tromsø in Northern Norway, urged the faithful to embrace patience and trust in God’s unfolding plan during times of waiting.
Bishop Varden, as CatholicVote previously reported, is a Trappist monk and bishop who has been serving the Diocese of Trondheim since 2019. He created a blog website Coram Fratribus in 2021 in order to share his sermons with a wider audience.
Bishop Varden is currently the Administrator of the Prelature of Tromsø, a territory where the faithful are still waiting for a local bishop to be appointed. In his September 8 pastoral letter on Coram Fratribus, which comes one year after Bishop Varden was appointed as Administrator, he wrote, “Like all of you, I had hoped a new local bishop would be appointed swiftly.”
He acknowledged the difficulty of waiting, particularly in a world where “immediacy” is often expected. But while waiting can be challenging, he emphasized, it can also be viewed as an opportunity for spiritual growth.
“Let us remind ourselves, then,” the Bishop wrote, “that a time of waiting can be a time of benediction.”
Drawing inspiration from the September 8 birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Bishop Varden reflected on how God’s plan for salvation unfolded over centuries without mankind’s knowledge, culminating in Mary’s faithful “Yes.”
“We must remember that God has a plan he mysteriously realises without limiting our freedom and without having any illusions about our moral and physical frailty,” he wrote. “His outlook exceeds ours.”
The Bishop compared the current period of waiting to the parable of the seed that grows mysteriously in the field, stating that it “is simply the way it is in affairs concerning the kingdom of God.”
“I am reminding you of these things, already well known to you, to share my conviction that our own wait here and now serves a purpose, that it constitutes a task,” the Bishop stated. “There is immense beauty in the Catholic Church in the North of Norway; there is a harvest waiting to be gathered in, of that I am certain.”
He encouraged the faithful to “use this time well to be deeply rooted in Christ, to experience what it means to live in him,” adding, “Let us, like the Virgin Mary, say Yes to God’s call even when we don’t know where it leads, trusting that God knows, and that that is enough.”
