Thoughts for a New Year - part 2
So here is the actual text that I mentioned back on Jan. 3rd, written during the aforementioned train journey:
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I feel so blessed to have seen and known true love in the eyes of people, be it fellow Brothers, friends, family. A love that does not seek to possess for oneself, but is rather a giving of self, a love that sets free rather than enslaves...
I am, in one way, the sum of my experiences and of those of my forbears, but I am not a slave to them. I am more than the some of my parts. Since I was a teenager I have sought to know myself better (and through this self-searching developed an interest in psychology) so that I might better serve God and his people. I have sought "to know my darkness and my light, so that I might be whole" (composer Michael Tippett). And all this was necessary. But in reality, it was and is a quest without end here in this life. Such wholeness I now realise can only be found in and through God, by handing over to Him all the different parts of my story past, present and future, the sum of all my experiences, so that he might transform them, sanctify them, make them whole, make them his (Is this a definition for Purgatory?).
Ultimately, this transformation will only be complete in death, in a final letting go of who I am so that I might become Him without denying my own identity as his child and creation; that I might leave my imprint (small and insignificant though it is) on God. In creating the universe, God (he who is unchanging by very definition) allows himself to be changed by that which he has created, no more so than in and through the death of his Son.
During Night Prayer (which is optional in many religious orders and therefore said in private by individuals, if said at all) , we pray "Into your hands, Lord, I commend your spirit," the last words of Jesus on the cross. And through the incarnation of God made man, God says to us, his creatures, "Into your hands I commend my Son." Though we betrayed that gift by putting his Son to death, Jesus makes of that betrayal our way to wholeness, he who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Through giving himself, through offering his life so that we might live, Jesus invites us into the eternal economy of self-giving that is at the heart of the Trinity as fellow sons and daughters of the Father. This self-giving, of freely handing all that we are over to God ("Not my will but yours be done, Lord,") is the model of living that we are called to here on earth... to be continued.
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I feel so blessed to have seen and known true love in the eyes of people, be it fellow Brothers, friends, family. A love that does not seek to possess for oneself, but is rather a giving of self, a love that sets free rather than enslaves...
I am, in one way, the sum of my experiences and of those of my forbears, but I am not a slave to them. I am more than the some of my parts. Since I was a teenager I have sought to know myself better (and through this self-searching developed an interest in psychology) so that I might better serve God and his people. I have sought "to know my darkness and my light, so that I might be whole" (composer Michael Tippett). And all this was necessary. But in reality, it was and is a quest without end here in this life. Such wholeness I now realise can only be found in and through God, by handing over to Him all the different parts of my story past, present and future, the sum of all my experiences, so that he might transform them, sanctify them, make them whole, make them his (Is this a definition for Purgatory?).
Two days after I started in my new job back at St. Mary's College in Sept. I lead the music (in modern worship style) for the start of year Mass with a group of young volunteers.
Ultimately, this transformation will only be complete in death, in a final letting go of who I am so that I might become Him without denying my own identity as his child and creation; that I might leave my imprint (small and insignificant though it is) on God. In creating the universe, God (he who is unchanging by very definition) allows himself to be changed by that which he has created, no more so than in and through the death of his Son.
During Night Prayer (which is optional in many religious orders and therefore said in private by individuals, if said at all) , we pray "Into your hands, Lord, I commend your spirit," the last words of Jesus on the cross. And through the incarnation of God made man, God says to us, his creatures, "Into your hands I commend my Son." Though we betrayed that gift by putting his Son to death, Jesus makes of that betrayal our way to wholeness, he who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Through giving himself, through offering his life so that we might live, Jesus invites us into the eternal economy of self-giving that is at the heart of the Trinity as fellow sons and daughters of the Father. This self-giving, of freely handing all that we are over to God ("Not my will but yours be done, Lord,") is the model of living that we are called to here on earth... to be continued.
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