Ronald Rolhisrer, OMI
April 6, 2015
Something there is that needs a crucifixion. Everything that’s good eventually gets scapegoated and crucified. How? By that curious, perverse dictate somehow innate within human life that assures that there’s always someone or something that cannot leave well enough alone, but, for reasons of its own, must hunt down and lash out at what’s good. What’s good, what’s of God, will always at some point be misunderstood, envied, hated, pursued, falsely accused, and eventually nailed to some cross. Every body of Christ inevitably suffers the same fate as Jesus: death through misunderstanding, ignorance, and jealousy.
But there’s a flipside as well: Resurrection always eventually trumps crucifixion. What’s good eventually triumphs. Thus, while nothing that’s of God will avoid crucifixion, no body of Christ stays in the tomb for long. God always rolls back the stone and, soon enough, new life bursts forth and we see why that original life had to be crucified. (“Wasn’t it necessary that the Christ should so have to suffer and die?”) Resurrection invariably follows crucifixion. Every crucified body will rise again. Our hope takes its root in that.
But how does this happen? Where do we see the resurrection? How do we experience resurrection after a crucifixion?
Scripture is subtle, though clear, on this. Where can we expect to experience resurrection? The gospel tell us that, on the morning of the resurrection, the women-followers of Jesus set out for the tomb of Jesus, carrying spices, expecting to anoint and embalm a dead body. Well-intentioned but misguided, what they find is not a dead body, but an empty tomb and an angel challenging them with these words: “Why are you looking for the living among the dead? Go instead into Galilee and you will find him there!”
Go instead into Galilee. Why Galilee? What’s Galilee? And how do we get there?
In the gospels, Galilee is not simply a geographical location, a place on a map. It is first of all a place in the heart. As well, Galilee refers to the dream and to the road of discipleship that the disciples once walked with Jesus and to that place and time when their hearts most burned with hope and enthusiasm. And now, after the crucifixion, just when they feel that the dream is dead, that their faith is only fantasy, they are told to go back to the place where it all began: “Go back to Galilee. He will meet you there!”
And they do go back to Galilee, both to the geographical location and to that special place in their hearts where once burned the dream of discipleship. And just as promised, Jesus appears to them. He doesn’t appear exactly as he was before, or as frequently as they would like him to, but he does appear as more than a ghost and a memory. The Christ that appears to them after the resurrection is in a different modality, but he’s physical enough to eat fish in their presence, real enough to be touched as a human being, and powerful enough to change their lives forever. Ultimately that’s what the resurrection asks us to do: To go back to Galilee, to return to the dream, hope, and discipleship that had once inflamed us but has now been lost through disillusionment.
This parallels what happens on the road to Emmaus in Luke’s gospel, where we are told that on the day of the resurrection, two disciples were walking away from Jerusalem towards Emmaus, with their faces downcast. An entire spirituality could be unpackaged from that simple line: For Luke, Jerusalem means the dream, the hope, and the religious centre from which all is to begin and where ultimately, all is to culminate. And the disciples are “walking away” from this place, away from their dream, towards Emmaus (Emmaus was a Roman Spa), a place of human comfort, a Las Vegas, or Monte Carlo. Since their dream has been crucified, the disciples are understandably discouraged and are walking away from it, towards some human solace, despairing in their hope: “But we had hoped!”
They never get to Emmaus. Jesus appears to them on the road, reshapes their hope in the light of their disillusionment, and turns them back towards Jerusalem.
That is one of the essential messages of Easter: Whenever we are discouraged in our faith, whenever our hopes seem to be crucified, we need to go back to Galilee and Jerusalem, that is, back to the dream and the road of discipleship that we had embarked upon before things went wrong. The temptation of course, whenever the kingdom doesn’t seem to work, is to abandon discipleship for human consolation, to head off instead for Emmaus, for the consolation of Las Vegas or Monte Carlo.
But, as we know, we never quite get to Las Vegas or Monte Carlo. In one guise or another, Christ always meets us on the road to those places, burns holes in our hearts, explains our latest crucifixion to us, and sends us back – and to our abandoned discipleship. Once there, it all makes sense again.
06 April 2015
04 April 2015
Wood and Nails and Colored Eggs
by: Martin Bell
WOOD
Something like an eternity ago, human beings got all caught up in the illusion that being human is a relatively unimportant sort of proposition. Here today – gone tomorrow. A vale of tears – that sort of foolishness.
What’s more tragic, of course, is that in the wake of this basic error there quickly followed that human beings are expendable, which easily degenerated into the proposition that some human beings are expendable. Really bad guys are expendable. Guys with low I.Q.’s are expendable. Anyone who disagrees with me is expendable. A long time ago, human beings got all caught up in the illusion that being human is a relatively unimportant sort of proposition.
Well, that’s not true. It’s wrong. All wrong. And it has always been wrong. From the creation of the heavens and the earth, it has been – wrong. There is nothing more important then being human. Our lives have eternal significance. And no one – absolutely no one – is expendable.
NAILS
Jesus was dead. He was dead and buried. It was expedient that he should be dead and buried. Caiaphas had explained that to himself and to the others over and over again. It is expedient, he said, that one man should die for the sake of the people. Jesus is expendable. Caiaphas suffered from the illusion that being human is relatively unimportant. And so Jesus was dead.
What happened then wasn’t so remarkable, really. God simply raised Jesus from the dead. He merely walked into the tomb that we call insignificance and absurdity, and meaninglessness, and other such names as that – he merely walked into the tomb and raised Jesus from the dead.
There was nothing very spectacular or remarkable about this. God revealed himself to be the same God who created the heavens and the earth and called his creation good; the same God who led his people out of Egypt to be a light to the nations; the same God who affirmed David in his weakness; who called forth the prophets; who kindled the heart of John the Baptist; and who reached out to touch his tiny children in the person of Jesus Christ.
God raised Jesus from the dead to the end that we should be clear – once and for all – that there is nothing more important than being human. Our lives have eternal significance. And no one – absolutely no one – is expendable.
COLORED EGGS
Some human beings are fortunate enough to be able to color eggs on Easter. If you have a pair of hands to hold the eggs, or if you are fortunate enough to be able to see the brilliant colors, then you are twice blessed.
This Easter some of us cannot hold the eggs, others of us cannot see the colors, many of us are unable to move at all – and so it will be necessary to color eggs in our hearts.
This Easter there is a hydrocephalic child lying very still in a hospital bed nearby with a head the size of a pillow and vacant, unmoving eyes, and he will not be able to color Easter eggs, and he will not be able to color Easter eggs in his heart, and so God will have to color eggs for him.
And God will color eggs for him. You can bet your life and the life of the created universe on that.
At the cross of Calvary God reconsecrated and sanctified wood and nails and absurdity and helplessness to be continuing vehicles of his love. And then he simply raised Jesus from the dead. And they both went home and colored eggs.
20 March 2015
11 March 2015
This is how...
“This is how the Lord acts: He does things simply. He speaks silently to you, to the heart. Let us remember in our lives the many time we have felt these things: the humility of God is His style; the simplicity of God is His style. And even in the liturgical celebration, in the sacraments, what is beautiful is that which manifests the humility of God, and not the worldly spectacle. It would do us good to journey through our life and to consider the many times the Lord has visited us with His grace, and always with this humble style, the style He calls us, too, to have: humility.”
—Pope Francis, daily homily, 3/9/15
(via)
25 February 2015
once we are seen as god sees us
We
do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that something deep
inside us is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred
to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity,
wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human
spirit.
e.e. cummings
e.e. cummings
16 February 2015
14 February 2015
05 January 2015
Now it begins...
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the Kings and Princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flocks,
The work of Christmas begins:
When the Kings and Princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flocks,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost
To heal the broken
To feed the hungry
To release the prisoner
To teach the nations
To bring Christ to all
To make music in the heart.
To heal the broken
To feed the hungry
To release the prisoner
To teach the nations
To bring Christ to all
To make music in the heart.
— Howard Thurman
29 December 2014
Francis:
"Never condemn. If you feel like condemning, condemn yourself, there's got to be something there, huh?" - During mass on December 15, 2014
12 December 2014
For now, stay
The season of Advent means there is something on the horizon the likes
of which we have never seen before. It is not possible to keep it from
coming, because it will. That's just how Advent works. What is possible
is to not see it, to miss it, to turn just as it brushes past you. And
you begin to grasp what it was you missed, like Moses in the cleft of
the rock, watching God's hindquarters fade in the distance.
So stay.
Sit.
Linger.
Tarry.
Ponder.
Wait.
Behold.
Wonder.
There will be time enough for running. For rushing. For worrying. For pushing.
For now, stay.
Wait.
Something is on the horizon.
[Night Visions by Jan Richardson]
So stay.
Sit.
Linger.
Tarry.
Ponder.
Wait.
Behold.
Wonder.
There will be time enough for running. For rushing. For worrying. For pushing.
For now, stay.
Wait.
Something is on the horizon.
[Night Visions by Jan Richardson]
01 December 2014
The algebra of Advent
By FR. RON ROLHEISER, omi
A couple of years ago, Robert Waller published a book that became a runaway bestseller and an immensely popular movie. Entitled The Bridges of Madison County, it stirred the romantic imagination in a way that few other stories have in recent times, especially as it was played out in its film version by Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep.
The story runs this way:
A photographer for National Geographic magazine is sent to photograph a series of old bridges in Madison County. Lost, he stops at a farmhouse to ask for directions. As chance would have it, the man of the house has just left for a cattle show. His wife is home alone and she and the photographer instantly sense a deep connection and fall violently in love.
Karma, soulmates, mysticism, whatever, they experience a rare and powerful affinity. Within hours they are in bed with each other, triggering a love affair that leaves them both sacramentally scarred for the rest of their lives.
The viewer of the movie or reader of this book is asked to believe something truly sublime has taken place, a masterpiece of love has been painted, and a noble thing worth more than life itself has just occurred. But can this be so? Can anyone paint a masterpiece in a couple of hours? Can sex with someone you met just two hours before be sublime?
To answer those questions, I suggest you watch another film which, ironically, was playing in theatres at nearly the same time. It's a version of Jane Austin's Sense and Sensibility and tells the story of a young woman who has to carry painful tension (one that includes the same feelings found in Bridges of Madison County) for a long time.
But unlike the characters in Bridges of Madison County, she doesn't quickly resolve it. Nobody is in bed with each other within a couple of hours. She carries the tension for a long time, years, and then finally when it is resolved there is true sublimity.
Why? Because something can only be sublime if first there has been some sublimation.
In essence, this expresses the meaning of Advent: For something to be sublime there must first be sublimation; fasting is the necessary prelude to feasting; greatness of soul is contingent on first nobly carrying tension; and what's truly divine can only appear after a certain kind of gestation.
Advent is about proper waiting.
It should therefore not be confused with Lent. The crimson-purple of Advent is not the black-purple of Lent. The former symbolizes yearning and longing, the latter repentance. The spirituality of Advent is not about repentance, but about carrying tension without prematurely resolving it so that what's born in us and in our world does not short-circuit love's rhythms.
What is the connection here? How does carrying tension help lead to the sublime? It does it by helping to produce the heat required for generativity.
An image might be helpful here. John of the Cross, in his book, The Living Flame of Love, compares our pre-Advent selves to green logs that have been thrown into a fire, the fire of love. Green logs, as we know, do not immediately burst into flame. Rather, being young and full of moisture, they sizzle for a long time before they reach kindling temperature and can take into themselves the fire that is around them so as to participate in it.
So too the rhythm of love: Only the really mature can truly burst into flame within community. The rest of us are still too self-contained, too green, too damp. We don't burst into flame when love surrounds us. Rather our dampness helps extinguish the communal flame.
What helps change this is precisely the tension in our lives. In carrying properly our unfulfilled desires we sizzle and slowly let go of the dampness of selfishness. In carrying tension we come to kindling temperature and are made ready for love.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, as a scientist, noticed that sometimes when you put two chemicals into a test-tube they do not automatically unite. They only merge at a higher temperature. They must first be heated to bring about unity.
There's an entire anthropology and psychology of love in that image. In order to love we must first be brought to a higher psychic temperature.
What brings us there? Sizzling in tension, not resolving things prematurely, not sleeping with the bride before the wedding, not trying to have the complete symphony within two hours.
The sublime has to be waited for. Only when there is first enough heat will there be unity. To give birth to what's divine requires the slow patience of gestation.
That's the algebra of Advent.
A couple of years ago, Robert Waller published a book that became a runaway bestseller and an immensely popular movie. Entitled The Bridges of Madison County, it stirred the romantic imagination in a way that few other stories have in recent times, especially as it was played out in its film version by Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep.
The story runs this way:
A photographer for National Geographic magazine is sent to photograph a series of old bridges in Madison County. Lost, he stops at a farmhouse to ask for directions. As chance would have it, the man of the house has just left for a cattle show. His wife is home alone and she and the photographer instantly sense a deep connection and fall violently in love.
Karma, soulmates, mysticism, whatever, they experience a rare and powerful affinity. Within hours they are in bed with each other, triggering a love affair that leaves them both sacramentally scarred for the rest of their lives.
The viewer of the movie or reader of this book is asked to believe something truly sublime has taken place, a masterpiece of love has been painted, and a noble thing worth more than life itself has just occurred. But can this be so? Can anyone paint a masterpiece in a couple of hours? Can sex with someone you met just two hours before be sublime?
To answer those questions, I suggest you watch another film which, ironically, was playing in theatres at nearly the same time. It's a version of Jane Austin's Sense and Sensibility and tells the story of a young woman who has to carry painful tension (one that includes the same feelings found in Bridges of Madison County) for a long time.
But unlike the characters in Bridges of Madison County, she doesn't quickly resolve it. Nobody is in bed with each other within a couple of hours. She carries the tension for a long time, years, and then finally when it is resolved there is true sublimity.
Why? Because something can only be sublime if first there has been some sublimation.
In essence, this expresses the meaning of Advent: For something to be sublime there must first be sublimation; fasting is the necessary prelude to feasting; greatness of soul is contingent on first nobly carrying tension; and what's truly divine can only appear after a certain kind of gestation.
Advent is about proper waiting.
It should therefore not be confused with Lent. The crimson-purple of Advent is not the black-purple of Lent. The former symbolizes yearning and longing, the latter repentance. The spirituality of Advent is not about repentance, but about carrying tension without prematurely resolving it so that what's born in us and in our world does not short-circuit love's rhythms.
What is the connection here? How does carrying tension help lead to the sublime? It does it by helping to produce the heat required for generativity.
An image might be helpful here. John of the Cross, in his book, The Living Flame of Love, compares our pre-Advent selves to green logs that have been thrown into a fire, the fire of love. Green logs, as we know, do not immediately burst into flame. Rather, being young and full of moisture, they sizzle for a long time before they reach kindling temperature and can take into themselves the fire that is around them so as to participate in it.
So too the rhythm of love: Only the really mature can truly burst into flame within community. The rest of us are still too self-contained, too green, too damp. We don't burst into flame when love surrounds us. Rather our dampness helps extinguish the communal flame.
What helps change this is precisely the tension in our lives. In carrying properly our unfulfilled desires we sizzle and slowly let go of the dampness of selfishness. In carrying tension we come to kindling temperature and are made ready for love.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, as a scientist, noticed that sometimes when you put two chemicals into a test-tube they do not automatically unite. They only merge at a higher temperature. They must first be heated to bring about unity.
There's an entire anthropology and psychology of love in that image. In order to love we must first be brought to a higher psychic temperature.
What brings us there? Sizzling in tension, not resolving things prematurely, not sleeping with the bride before the wedding, not trying to have the complete symphony within two hours.
The sublime has to be waited for. Only when there is first enough heat will there be unity. To give birth to what's divine requires the slow patience of gestation.
That's the algebra of Advent.
Make no mistake...
... 'Holiness' is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with being 'better' or being 'happier'. Holiness is the crumbling away of self-lies and untruths; breaking through the facade until we stand naked before the naked Truth of God.
08 November 2014
Stories
Recently, an article from Psychology Today states:
Stories are how we think. They are how we make meaning of life. Call them schemes, scripts, cognitive maps, mental models, metaphors, or narratives. Stories are how we explain how things work, how we make decisions, how we justify our decisions, how we persuade others, how we understand our place in the world, create our identities, and define and teach social values.
Stories are how we think. They are how we make meaning of life. Call them schemes, scripts, cognitive maps, mental models, metaphors, or narratives. Stories are how we explain how things work, how we make decisions, how we justify our decisions, how we persuade others, how we understand our place in the world, create our identities, and define and teach social values.
05 November 2014
If therapy doesn't help...
If a therapy doesn't
help you feel better we think its not working. In contemplation, the
purpose isn't to help you feel better. Its to help you see the truth of
your life. Seeing the truth of your life may initially make you feel
terrible. But if you're committed to truth, then you the question of
how you feel is not the main issue."
-unknown
-unknown
12 August 2014
Depression: How the Devil poisons humility...
"St. John Vianney, the famous Cure of the tiny French village of Ars, is most popularly known as the holy and humble priest who spent sixteen to eighteen hours a day hearing confessions and giving advice to long processions of people. He practiced extraordinary penances and fasts for the conversion of sinners and was subject to diabolic persecution all his priestly life. It is said that the devil revealed once that if there were but three priests in the world like the Cure of Ars, the devil would lose his kingdom.
What is less known is the overwhelming depression that weighed upon John Vianney’s soul without relief his entire life. Though he was the most sought-after man in all of France, he seemed incapable of seeing the immense amount of good he was doing. Despite the tens of thousands of pilgrims who traveled to Ars each year in the hope of receiving the sacraments or a word of advice from him, he believed himself useless. The priest who had reawakened the faith of a village and set all France aflame through his preaching and holiness felt God so far from him that he was afraid he had no more faith. He believed himself to have no intelligence or gift of discernment. It is as if God drew a veil over his eyes so that he could see nothing of what God was doing through him for others. The Cure feared he was ruining everything and had become an obstacle in God’s way.
The root of John Vianney’s severe depression was his fear of doing badly at every turn, and the thousands who traveled to Ars increased his terror. It never occurred to him that he might have a special grace. Instead, he feared that the long line of penitents to his village church were a sign that he was a hypocrite. He feared facing the judgment with the responsibility for all these people on his conscience. There was not a moment when he felt that God was satisfied with him. A great and profound sadness possessed his soul so powerfully that he eventually could not even imagine relief.
Whenever the tempests of depression seemed to have enough power to drown him in the vision of his own miseries, the Cure would bow his head, throw himself before God like “a dog at the feet of his master,” and allow the storm to pass without changing his resolve to love and serve God if he could. Yet he kept this pain so private that except for a few confidantes, most people saw only tranquility and gentleness in his bearing."
03 August 2014
Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Searching for the Right Fuel
July 28, 2014
Sometimes everything can seem right on the surface while, deep
down, nothing is right at all. We see this, for example, in the famous
parable in the gospels about the Prodigal Son and his Older Brother. By
every outward appearance the Older Brother is doing everything right:
He’s perfectly obedient to his father, is at home, and is doing
everything his father asks of him. And, unlike his younger brother, he’s
not wasting his father’s property on prostitutes and partying. He seems
a model of generosity and morality.
However, as soon becomes obvious in the story, things are far from right. While his life looks so good on the outside, he is full of resentment and bitter moralizing inside and is, in fact, envious of his brother’s amorality. What’s happening? In essence, his actions are right, but his energy is wrong.
But, lest we judge him too harshly, we need to have the honesty to acknowledge that we all struggle in this way, at least if we are moral and generous. What is played out in the bitterness of the Older Brother is, in the astute words of Alice Miller, “the drama of the gifted child”, namely, the resentment, self-pity, and propensity for bitter moralizing that inevitably besets those of us who don’t stray from our duties, who do stay home, and who carry the brunt of the load for our families, churches, and communities. Sadly, often, the feeling we are left with when we give our lives over in sacrifice is not joy and gratitude for having been given the grace, opportunity, and good sense to stay home and serve but rather resentment that the load fell on our shoulders, that so many others dodged it, and that so many in the world are having a fling while we are on the straight and narrow. Too often, among us, good and honest people who are fighting for truth and God’s cause, we find a spirit of bitter moralizing that colors and compromises both our generosity and our sacrifice. But I say this with sympathy: It’s not easy to give oneself over, to forego one’s dreams, ambitions, comfort, and pleasure for the sake of God, truth, duty, family, and community.
How might we do it? How might we imitate the fidelity of the Older Brother without falling into his envy, self-pity, and bitterness? Where can we access the right fuel to live out the Gospel?
As Christians, of course, we need to look at Jesus. He lived a life of radical generosity and self-surrender and yet never fell into the kind of self-pity that emanates from the sense of having missed out on something. He was never disappointed or bitter that he had given his life over. Nor indeed did he, like Hamlet, turn his renunciation into an existential tragedy, that of the lonely, alienated hero who is outwardly intriguing but not generative. Jesus remained always free, warm, forgiving, non-judgmental, and generative. Moreover, throughout this entire life of self-sacrifice, he always radiated a joy that shocked his contemporaries. What was his secret?
The answer, the gospels tell us, lies in the parable of the man who is ploughing a field and finds a buried treasure and in the parable of the merchant who after years of searching finds the pearl of great price. In each case, the man gives away everything he owns so that he can buy the treasure or the pearl. And what must be highlighted in each of these parables is that neither man regrets for a second what he had to give up but instead each acts out of the unspeakable joy of what he has discovered and what riches this is now going to bring into his life. Each man is so fueled by the joy of what he has discovered that he is not focused on what he has given up.
Only in this kind of context can self-sacrifice make sense and be truly generative. If the pain of what is sacrificed overshadows the joy of what is discovered, that is, if the focus is more on what we have lost and given up rather than on what we have found, we will end up doing the right actions but with the wrong energy, carrying other people’s crosses and sending them the bill. And we will be unable to stop ourselves from being judgmental, bitter, and secretly envious of the amoral.
To the very extent that we die to ourselves in order to live for others, we run the perennial risk of falling into the kind of bitterness that besets us whenever we feel we have missed out on something. That’s an occupational hazard, a very serious one, inside Christian discipleship and the spiritual life in general. And so, our focus must always be on the treasure, the pearl of great price, the rich meaning, the self-authenticating joy that is the natural fruit of any real self-sacrifice. And that joyful energy will take us beyond self-pity and envy of the amoral.
However, as soon becomes obvious in the story, things are far from right. While his life looks so good on the outside, he is full of resentment and bitter moralizing inside and is, in fact, envious of his brother’s amorality. What’s happening? In essence, his actions are right, but his energy is wrong.
But, lest we judge him too harshly, we need to have the honesty to acknowledge that we all struggle in this way, at least if we are moral and generous. What is played out in the bitterness of the Older Brother is, in the astute words of Alice Miller, “the drama of the gifted child”, namely, the resentment, self-pity, and propensity for bitter moralizing that inevitably besets those of us who don’t stray from our duties, who do stay home, and who carry the brunt of the load for our families, churches, and communities. Sadly, often, the feeling we are left with when we give our lives over in sacrifice is not joy and gratitude for having been given the grace, opportunity, and good sense to stay home and serve but rather resentment that the load fell on our shoulders, that so many others dodged it, and that so many in the world are having a fling while we are on the straight and narrow. Too often, among us, good and honest people who are fighting for truth and God’s cause, we find a spirit of bitter moralizing that colors and compromises both our generosity and our sacrifice. But I say this with sympathy: It’s not easy to give oneself over, to forego one’s dreams, ambitions, comfort, and pleasure for the sake of God, truth, duty, family, and community.
How might we do it? How might we imitate the fidelity of the Older Brother without falling into his envy, self-pity, and bitterness? Where can we access the right fuel to live out the Gospel?
As Christians, of course, we need to look at Jesus. He lived a life of radical generosity and self-surrender and yet never fell into the kind of self-pity that emanates from the sense of having missed out on something. He was never disappointed or bitter that he had given his life over. Nor indeed did he, like Hamlet, turn his renunciation into an existential tragedy, that of the lonely, alienated hero who is outwardly intriguing but not generative. Jesus remained always free, warm, forgiving, non-judgmental, and generative. Moreover, throughout this entire life of self-sacrifice, he always radiated a joy that shocked his contemporaries. What was his secret?
The answer, the gospels tell us, lies in the parable of the man who is ploughing a field and finds a buried treasure and in the parable of the merchant who after years of searching finds the pearl of great price. In each case, the man gives away everything he owns so that he can buy the treasure or the pearl. And what must be highlighted in each of these parables is that neither man regrets for a second what he had to give up but instead each acts out of the unspeakable joy of what he has discovered and what riches this is now going to bring into his life. Each man is so fueled by the joy of what he has discovered that he is not focused on what he has given up.
Only in this kind of context can self-sacrifice make sense and be truly generative. If the pain of what is sacrificed overshadows the joy of what is discovered, that is, if the focus is more on what we have lost and given up rather than on what we have found, we will end up doing the right actions but with the wrong energy, carrying other people’s crosses and sending them the bill. And we will be unable to stop ourselves from being judgmental, bitter, and secretly envious of the amoral.
To the very extent that we die to ourselves in order to live for others, we run the perennial risk of falling into the kind of bitterness that besets us whenever we feel we have missed out on something. That’s an occupational hazard, a very serious one, inside Christian discipleship and the spiritual life in general. And so, our focus must always be on the treasure, the pearl of great price, the rich meaning, the self-authenticating joy that is the natural fruit of any real self-sacrifice. And that joyful energy will take us beyond self-pity and envy of the amoral.
12 July 2014
Take Nothing for the Journey
Take Nothing for the Journey
Heal and Proclaim …
Were the twelve afraid?
Did they wonder if they could do those things?
Compared to the quality of your ministry,
Did they feel inadequate and unworthy?
What persuaded them to go? Your words?
Your friendship? Their enthusiasm?
Your deep belief that they could do it?
And you said:
“Take nothing for the journey”.
What did you mean?
Trust or more than trust?
Did you perhaps imply that we can’t wait
Until we have all the possible things we need?
That we can’t postpone “doing”
Until we are positive of our talents?
That we can’t hold off our commitment
Until we are absolutely sure
We won’t make a mistake?
I think of all the excuses and reasons
We can give for not serving and giving:
No time, no talent, no knowledge,
No energy, no assured results.
You say, “Take nothing.
Don’t worry about your inadequacies.
I will provide for you.
Go! Just Go! Go with my power.
Risk the road, risk the work.
Go! I will be with you.
What else do you need?”
~~ Joyce Rupp
Heal and Proclaim …
Were the twelve afraid?
Did they wonder if they could do those things?
Compared to the quality of your ministry,
Did they feel inadequate and unworthy?
What persuaded them to go? Your words?
Your friendship? Their enthusiasm?
Your deep belief that they could do it?
And you said:
“Take nothing for the journey”.
What did you mean?
Trust or more than trust?
Did you perhaps imply that we can’t wait
Until we have all the possible things we need?
That we can’t postpone “doing”
Until we are positive of our talents?
That we can’t hold off our commitment
Until we are absolutely sure
We won’t make a mistake?
I think of all the excuses and reasons
We can give for not serving and giving:
No time, no talent, no knowledge,
No energy, no assured results.
You say, “Take nothing.
Don’t worry about your inadequacies.
I will provide for you.
Go! Just Go! Go with my power.
Risk the road, risk the work.
Go! I will be with you.
What else do you need?”
~~ Joyce Rupp
18 June 2014
Radical grace
Prayer
is sitting in the silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude
until we are grateful, praising God until we ourselves are a constant
act of praise.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM
Radical Grace: Daily Meditations
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM
Radical Grace: Daily Meditations
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)