Our earth is wonderful,
indeed, for Jesus has come to stay with us. His mercy finds us here over and
over again. Eternity is always interrupting, if we dare notice. The amazing yet
ordinary things - the beauty, the sorrow in human experience and in all of creation
- beckon to us and draw us to him, who is constantly seeking opportunities to
engage us. And the needier we are; the more impossible our impediments, the
greater the opportunity for Jesus’ graced entrée. The “horizon of the
reign of God is immeasurable…and begins here, on this earth, and it is about
this world because from the very beginning God's intent was nothing other than
the world,”* a world that he longs to heal and sanctify more and more.
Day after day atrocities
beyond imagining all over the world. And painfully, astoundingly,
embarrassingly, disaster and mass murder have become ordinary occurrences. Our
hearts numb, desensitized, inured to horror. And so we come to him; we bring each other, we bring the
world in its suffering and despondency and seeming hopelessness, longing for
the intrusion of his grace. Impeded, our tongues thick, not knowing how to
speak our need and longing.
Christ Jesus assures us that he hears, he understands; that he is
with us, he himself praying, articulating our desire in words beyond words.
This is what our prayer is best of all: our desire groaned by Jesus for us,
within us.
Photograph by Brother Brian. *Quotation by Gerhard Lohfink.