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In Christ we experience God’s modest but
insistent plea for our love.* He is a lover who loves to surprise, astonish, beguile even charm and disarm
with his tenderness. But watching
and waiting for him can be rather demanding. Most of all because Jesus is
always showing up when we least expect, at the most unexpected times. And if we
are called to live in incessant desire for him, it is of course because he is
always at the threshold of our yearning, yearning for us more than we can
imagine.
We have
come here to the monastery to wait for him and to welcome the mystery of God in the midst of our ordinariness. Our waiting is
about powerlessness, poverty, littleness, for in Jesus the mystery of God is
constantly revealed even as it is hidden. If indeed we seek intimacy with this
Mystery, vigilance will always be essential because of the divine reversal that
always obtains. God is always reversing things, turning things upside-down,
doing it his way, sneaking in through the low door, born of a Virgin, a Baby sleeping in the hay.
He is attentive to the desiring that must underpin each action of our day. We must be willing to be
surprised over and over again by his incessant, attentive love.
* Oliviér Clement
