The Stained Glass Buffalo: On the road again...

18 May 2008

On the road again...

God brings Abraham out from among his family and sets him on certain path. When it comes down to it, everyone has to undergo his own exodus. He not only has to leave the place that nurtured him and become independent, but has to come out of his own reserved self.

He must leave himself behind, transcend his own limits; only then will he reach the Promised Land, so to speak - the sphere of freedom, in which he plays his part in creation. We have come to recognize this fundamental law of transcendence as being the essence of love.

And of course the act of one who loves me is an act of this type. He has to bring me out of the comfortable inclination to stay within myself. Isolation is contrary to man's inmost inclination. If isolation means not being loved, being abandoned, being alone on one's own, this situation is indeed the fear underlying all our fears.

Thus we can see again that man is constructed from within, in the image of God, to be loved and to love. At this point I believe we have to refer to man's being in the image of God.

God is love. The essence of love portrays its own nature in the Trinity. Man is in God's image, and thereby he is a being whose innermost dynamic is likewise directed toward the receiving and the giving of love.

Benedictus
Pope Benedict XVI

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It is Jesus

“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.

It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.”
--Pope John Paul II

Carlo Carretto:

How much I must criticize you, my church, and yet how much I love you! You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe more to you than to anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence. You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness. Never in this world have I seen anything more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful. Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face - and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your sure arms! No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you. Then too - where would I go? To build another church? But I could not build one without the same defects, for they are my defects. And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ's church. No, I am old enough, I know better.