Our Diminishment

 …mystical union begins with an ordinary level of zeal for the doing of God’s will…We grow not by acquisition of arcane skills but by the diminishment of self by relativizing its demands and transcending its vision. The monastery does not help us by providing us with brilliant insights and new horizons. The institution’s contribution is…to undermine the tyranny of self; it is God who creates what is new. When we say that contemplation is a gift, we mean precisely that. It cannot be acquired or merited by ourselves or communicated to us by others. Contemplation comes by virtue of our being absorbed within the Paschal Mystery. Lines by Michael Casey