Love in the Image of God

Humble love is perhaps the greatest of all evangelical virtues, much more rare than the frequent use of the word ‘love’ in contemporary literature would lead us to suspect. Love in the image of God – generous, patient, gentle love toward everyone, toward those nearest and those most distant, toward friend and enemy, toward just anyone who shows up. A Cistercian Abbott who lived in the 12th century, the blessed Guerric of Igny, said it this way: ‘It is the property of friendship to make itself small before its friends’.

ANDRÉ LOUF Tuning Into Grace

Trusting the Path God Chooses for Us

When God becomes our guide he insists that we trust him without reservations and put aside all nervousness about his guidance. We are sent along the path he has chosen for us, but we cannot see it, and nothing we have read is any help to us. Were we acting on our own we should have to rely on our experience. It would be too risky to do anything else. But it is very different when God acts with us. Divine action is always new and fresh, it never retraces it steps, but always finds new routes.

JEAN-PIERRE DE CAUSSADE Abandonment to Divine Providence

Homily — 27th Sunday in O.T.

And the apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.”

Today’s Gospel begins with the apostles calling out to the Lord as one voice, “Increase our faith.” We all know that the Lord is often frustrated with the disciples for their lack of faith. For example, afraid that they were going sink in the storm on the lake he said to them, “Where is your faith?” On another occasion, counseling them against anxiety about meeting their daily needs, he tells them “If God so clothes the grass in the field that grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith?” 

This is the first time the apostles have themselves petitioned the Lord to “increase their faith”.  What occasioned this appeal? If we look to the verses immediately preceding today’s Gospel, we hear the Lord address the disciples in this way: “Things that cause sin will inevitably occur, but woe to the person through whom they occur. It would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he be thrown into the sea than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin.” “Be on your guard”, he warns them.

The next verses concern the challenge of bringing back into the community those who have gone astray: They are to rebuke those who sin and forgive those who repent. The Lord insists that even “if [someone] wrongs you seven times in one day and returns to you seven times saying, ‘I am sorry,’ you should forgive him.”

If we go back one step further, we see that these verses immediately follow upon the parable of the rich man and Lazarus which we heard last week. The rich man has caused others to sin by his bad example of pursuing a life of comfort and pleasure while ignoring the poor man Lazarus at his doorstep. Now he wants to warn others of the consequences, and he cannot. He begs Abraham to send Lazarus as a witness to his five brothers to warn them, so that they do not “come to this place of torment.”

Confronted with these demands and challenges, the apostles respond, “Increase our faith.” 

Have faith and you will do great things, Jesus tells them. Just surrender, trust, let go, hand yourself over and all sorts of possibilities will open up. In me, you can do a lot, more than you ever thought. A mustard seed is very tiny, whereas a mulberry bush is large and has thick, deep and tenacious roots.  Yet, with this small faith, if you were to say to it “Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ … it would obey you.” 

This “obedience” on the part of the natural order is the fruit of taking on what St. Paul calls our “obedience of faith”. The obedience of faith has such powerful effects in Christ, that it puts the cosmos, the natural order, in our service. In the grace of Christ it obeys our command. Creation, instead of simply presenting us with things that potentially lead us astray, serve as a distraction and pull us in all directions, truly becomes a good placed at our service that works with us for the good in Christ. It cooperates with God and with us in forming good habits and virtues in us. In so far as  this happens the created order participates in the divine restoration and achieves its own end as being created good and striving toward the good, toward life, toward wholeness and integrity. All this occurs because of the new life that is given us with the act of faith.

Jesus uses these hyperboles to give his apostles a strong word of encouragement. As though to say, “Your mission will have its challenges, I will made big demands of you, but the faith I give you is sufficient for you to do to do great things. So give your assent, trust, surrender. For my yoke is easy, my burden is light.”  

In what follows he shows them the way forward, which will be to follow along his own path of humility, by putting on the mind of a servant, like him, who has come among them as one who serves, as he will tell them at the Last Supper. 

“When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’”

To my mind it helps to get into what Jesus is after here if we look more closely at the imagery Jesus uses to describe the work of the servant. The servant plows the field, or tends the sheep, and serves at table. 

Earlier in the Gospels Jesus describes the disciples as those who have “put their hand to the plow”. In that context, Jesus tells them that no one who puts his hand to the plow who then “looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.” They plow the field when they spread the Gospel. With this comes great responsibility for as Jesus warned them, woe to those who in their teaching become a stumbling block for others, causing them to sin.

The servant tends the sheep. The apostles tend the sheep when they act like the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine behind to go after the one who has gone astray. This corresponds to the command of the Lord to rebuke those who sin and to forgive again and again those who repent. 

But this is not the end or sum of the role of the servant of the Lord. There are also all the ordinary day-to-day tasks that must be performed. These are represented by serving at table. 

These three make up apostolic activity as faith working itself out in love. 

We find this pattern at work in the Gospel itself. Earlier, Jesus sends the Twelve out with the mission “to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal [the sick]. Upon their return they tell Jesus what they had done. Together, they all withdraw to Bethsaida. But the crowds followed, so Jesus spoke to them about the kingdom of God and healed those who needed to be cured. He plows the field and tends the sheep. When the Twelve advise Jesus at the end of the day to send the people away, he responds “give them some food yourselves.” They feed five thousand with twelve wicker baskets left over. They serve at table.

Again, when Jesus had completed his “field work” just before his passion, he instructed Peter and John to “Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover.” 

When they are gathered together for the meal he said to the apostles, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer…”

To my mind, the Lord’s demand that once the apostles have done all that is commanded they should consider themselves unprofitable servants who have done what they were obliged to do is best understood when seen as pointing to this eager desire of the Lord to eat this Passover with them. For here he opens up their service into a share in the paschal mystery. He will not only die for them but grant them a share in his suffering. 

For this to be full fruit he needs them to be humble servants who receive everything from their master. He needs them to be ready be put on his own mind, to be ready to be conformed to him in his own self-emptying love. To be able to say with St. Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” 

The genuine humility that sincerely renounces all attribution of achievement to oneself and hands it over to God frees us up to share in the whole of Jesus’ own experience. It frees him to to lead us wherever and in whatever way he wishes, bestowing gifts as he sees fit, knowing that he will find in our hearts a fertile field in which to plow deep furrows with his teaching, sheep that will recognize his voice, who, when they falter, will heed his rebuke in sincere repentance and receive the joy of the forgiveness of sins.  In this rich dramatic action we find the increase of faith begged for by the apostles, a life that opens up into thanksgiving, joy and praise. This is a living participation in the eternal messianic banquet the Lord eagerly desires to share with his disciples.

Mothers of God

What good is it to me if Mary gave birth to the Son of God hundreds of years ago, if I do not give birth to the Son of God in my time and my culture? We are all meant to be Mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born.

MEISTER ECKHART

Spiritual Baggage

Those overtaken by a storm when traveling by sea don't worry about their luggage. But throw it overboard with their own hands, considering their property to be less important than their lives. So why don't we, following this example, throw out whatever drags our soul down to the depths?

ST. NELIOS THE ASCETIC

Means, Not Ends

Fasting, vigils, the study of Scripture, renouncing possessions and the world – these are the means not the end. Perfection is not found in them, but through them. It is pointless to boast about such practices when we have not achieved the love of God and our fellow humans. Those who have achieved love of God within themselves, are always mindful of God.

JOHN CASSIAN

Comprehending God

God cannot be comprehended by the faculty of intelligence, but is totally and perfectly intelligible through the power of love. Every single creature, moreover will know him differently. Dwell on this if you have the grace to do so, because to experience this for oneself is everlasting joy, and the contrary is everlasting pain.

The Cloud of Unknowing 

Advice on Disregarding Spiritual Sweetness

If a man is moved to love God apart from any sweetness he feels, he is already focusing his love upon God, whom he does not feel. If he sets his will upon pleasurable and consoling feelings, thinking about them and resting in them, he is setting his will on creatures or related things, making them into an end instead of a means. That man would be very ignorant who thinks that because sweetness and delight are failing him, God is failing him, or should think that in having these he is having God. He would be still more ignorant if he followed God looking for sweetness, and rejoiced and rested in it when obtained. In this case his love is not set purely on God alone above all things, for clinging to and desiring what is created, his will cannot soar to God.

ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS Letter XI

The Lord Waits

The Lord waits for us to respond day by day to his holy counsels by our actions. In fact the days of this life are given us as a respite to correct our error errors, as the Apostle Paul says: ‘Do you not know that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?’ (Romans 2.4). And in his loving-kindness the Lord says, ‘Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked… and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?’ (Ezekiel 18.23)

BENEDICT OF NURSIA Rule, Prologue, 35-38

Freedom

In his great love God was unwilling to restrict our freedom, even though he had the power to do so. He has left us to come to him by the love of our heart alone.

ISAAC OF NINEVEH Ascetic Treatises, 81

Succumbing to Delusion in Prayer

Once the intellect has arrived at true and pure prayer it is likely that the demons . . . will offer it an illusory vision of God beneath a form pleasing to the senses, so as to make it believe that it has fully attained the goal of its prayer. Now all of that, as an admirable gnostic said, is the work of the passion of vainglory and of a demon whose assaults make the brain reel.

EVAGRIUS OF PONTUS On Prayer, 73 (Philokalia I, 183)

Concentrating Eros on the Lord

I have seen impure souls who threw themselves headlong into physical eros to a frenzied degree. It was their very experience of that eros that led them to interior conversion. They concentrated their eros on the Lord. Rising above fear they tried to love God with an insatiable desire. That is why, when Christ spoke of the woman who had been a sinner, he did not say that she had been afraid, but that she had loved much and had easily been able to surmount love by love.

JOHN CLIMACUS The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 5th Step 

The Ability to See God

‘The Kingdom of God is within you’ (Luke 17.21). From this we learn that by a heart made pure . . . we see in our own beauty the image of the Godhead . . . You have in you the ability to see God. He who formed you put in your being an immense power. When God created you he enclosed in you the image of his perfection, as the mark of a seal is impressed on wax.

GREGORY OF NYSSA Homilies on the Beatitudes, 6

Never Mind What Happens

Keep yourself carefully from setting your thoughts upon what happens in the community, and still more from speaking of it except to the proper person at the proper time. Nor should you ever be shocked or marvel at what you see or hear, but should try to keep your soul forgetful of it all. For if you want to ponder on all that happens you would always discover something amiss even if you lived among angels.

ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS

What God Demands

What God demands of us is not this or that; He demands everything.

PIERRE REVERDY TO JACQUES MARITAIN

Sow Time

If we are rushed for time, sow time and we will reap time. Go to church and spend a quiet hour in prayer. You will have more time than ever and your work will get done.

DOROTHY DAY 15 Days of Prayer With Dorothy Day

Reservoirs & Canals

Be a reservoir rather than as a canal. A canal spreads abroad water as it receives it, but a reservoir waits until it is filled before overflowing, and thus communicates, without loss to itself, its super abundant water. In the Church at the present day, we have many canals, few reservoirs.

St. BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX Sermons on the Song of Songs

True and False

Nothing should be held true merely because it is eloquently expressed, no false because it sounds harsh upon the lips. And a thing is not true because rudely uttered, nor is it false because its utterance is splendid. I have learned from you that wisdom is like wholesome food and folly like unwholesome food: they can be set forth in language ornate or plain, just as both kinds of food can be served on rich dishes or on peasant ware.

SAINT AUGUSTINE Confessions

Homily — The Humility of God

Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled,

and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

Today’s readings convey a strong and uncomfortable message—the indispensable need for humility if we are to enter the Kingdom of heaven: humility as a human stance that pleases God because it allows room for him to enter our heart; humility as a trait that makes lovable the person who possesses it; and humility above all as an attitude that reflects Jesus’ own mindset and manner of life: Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart (Mt 11:29). It is helpful here to remember the group of significant English words with which “humility” shares the same root hum-, namely: humus, human and humor. Why do these words belong together? What links them is a clear-eyed realism about ourselves, hinting that we should always prefer staying close to the soil from which we were taken as a way of abiding in the truth, rather than flying too high for our own good on the wings of conceit, which will soon bring us crashing back to earth. When we laugh at ourselves, I’m sure, we always elicit a conspiratorial smile from God, whereas any form of pomposity offends God’s Heart and makes him worry grimly about our fate.

In the gospel, Jesus has been invited to dine (φαγεῖν ἄρτον, v. 1) at the house of a leading Pharisee, an occasion which Jesus’ mere presence mysteriously transforms into turns into a wedding banquet (εἰς γάμους, v. 8). As he reclines at table he feels the freedom to address, first, his fellow-guests, and then the host himself. He does not discourse abstractly about moral truth and the desirability of humility as a virtue: Jesus is no professor of moral theology! Rather, reading between the lines, we realize that, the whole time, Jesus is really speaking about himself, revealing his innermost Heart. Jesus is always revealing himself because, what he harbors in his soul, is nothing but the love and truth of the Father, and it was after all precisely to reveal the Father that he came. As the incarnate Word of God, he is not a teacher like other teachers, who point to truths “out there” somewhere in reason’s horizon. Instead, in every detail of his words and deeds, Jesus is always revealing to us the nature and Heart of God as these become visible and audible and graspable in his own person: I and the Father are one (Jn 10:30). 

What Jesus reveals today in particular is the humility of God—beautiful, majestic, gentle and enthralling, seeking to convert our hearts to itself by enticing us to fall in love with such abiding kindness. Christ is the one who, even though he was “in the form of God”, nevertheless humbled himself, became man, and assumed the form of a slave to the point of sharing fully in our mortal human condition, even to death on the cross. This is the humility of God’s love, wellspring of all other humility. Christ is the one who, condescending to come to us at all, then proceeded to choose the last and lowest of all places among us, not primarily to “teach us a moral lesson in humility” but as if, truly, his love could be fully satiated only there—as if only in that last place he could fully reveal the splendor of God’s majesty. For Christ to be mediator of the new covenant, as we hear in Hebrews today, means that he did not redeem the world by a master-plan of superefficient, cosmic management. No: Christ redeemed the world by the power of a humility that led him to shed his own blood for us, and his blood speaks more eloquently than the blood of Abel.  “In his self-humiliation,” writes von Balthasar in an unforgettable passage, “the Lord Jesus went so low that henceforth no one can ever fall, no matter how deeply, without falling into Jesus”.  

Jesus is the one who, having lowered himself, was then lifted up by the Father, according to the spiritual law that he here proclaims: Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. And Jesus is the one who, in his own life, prepared a place of privilege for the poor and the little, the sick and the weak, the crippled, the lame and the blind. He delighted in speaking about the love and the nearness of God above all to those who had been cast aside by others. But let us note well that Jesus’ delight in so doing is not a case of noblesse oblige, as when the rich deign now and then to visit the slums and throw a few coins to the beggars. Jesus’ delight in the poor is not a show or a sham; it is the deeply genuine and subjective reality of his own interior being, because it comes precisely from the fact that Jesus as a matter of course numbers himself among the outcast and dwells there as in his natural habitat. In his own flesh he has experienced both the suffering and despair of the afflicted and the Father’s strength and consolation. In this experience he has given us the sole valid pattern of our salvation.

But what does humility look like in our own lives? Let’s first of all leave aside all artificial poses of unworthiness and theatrical self-abasement à la Sarah Bernhardt, because surely authentic humility never makes a show of itself and wastes no time on pretense. Humility, I would say, means to be perfectly content to be what God has made us to be, and to stay gladly at the precise place assigned to us by the Lord in our day-to-day existence, yet without being closed to further manifestations of God’s will. This is the honest and healthy renunciation of one’s own self-promoting will that the Gospel calls for. The greatest enemy of humility is compulsive ambition, jealousy and envy. At the practical level, furthermore, humility is being faithful to the particular task the Lord has entrusted to us, no matter how hidden and lack-luster, no matter whether we’re working with five talents or only a single one. Humility, quite simply, is knowing in our bones that we are not our own masters, and that therefore we do not belong to ourselves: that the deepest and most beautiful thing that we can be is servants of God, a title which ought to give us the greatest joy. Humility is also the wisdom of the person who values his or her own worth with precision, not aspiring to things that are too high or beyond one’s strength. Humility bows soberly to reality and doesn’t seek to escape it either in an upward or a downward direction, through the sham of pretense or a calculated show of abjection. 

St Paul wrote to the Romans: Do not think of [yourselves] more highly than [you] ought to think, but think soberly, each according to the measure of faith that God has apportioned (12:3). Paul is here pointing out how humility is not self-humiliation or false modesty but, rather, being in harmony with the objective reality created in us by God, choosing to abide contentedly within our apportioned “measure of faith”.

The first in the Kingdom, says Jesus, will be those who were scorned as the last by human society. Even as self-proclaimed “followers of Christ”, we often find it normal to invite to our home (or to our friendship and intimacy) only persons to whom we are bound by ties of affinity and love, and those who have previously invited us and whose invitation we must reciprocate, as if we were paying back a debt or perhaps in the hope of being invited by them again… But Jesus, in his contrary teaching, is here obeying God’s (to us) strange and topsy-turvy logic. He reveals to us—yes, reveals, because this is so foreign to our native instincts—that the illogical logic of God can become a source of blessedness for us, too:  Blessed indeed will you be [if you invite to your home the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind], because of their inability to repay you. Jesus expects from us an unconditional love and generosity that does not seek a reward. He is calling our hearts to practice a love such as he bestows on each of us, which communicates to us the power of loving with a like love, simply because it is through our love that God’s Kingdom spreads. Blessedness, according to the Gospel, consists in our participating in the mind, Heart and destiny of Jesus, who loved us unilaterally while we were sinners and enemies of God; Jesus, who bowed meekly to Judas in order to wash his feet, even though Judas was about to betray him; Jesus, who sought no earthly rewards, and did not attempt to force anyone to love him….

Finally, the kind of blessedness generated by this love derives from pure gratuity, from the joy of loving indiscriminately, “wastefully” even, based on the conviction that love is its own end, that (for the person who loves) love is its own reward. Such is the blessedness of loving as Jesus loves, the blessedness of the person who is free from the fear that he is going to lose something precious by loving, the indestructible bliss of the person whose only desired reward is being one more guest in God’s great wedding banquet in the Kingdom, no matter what his assigned place there or who his companions at table might be. 

At today’s particular banquet at the home of this leading Pharisee, I have no doubt but that Jesus, while teaching this world-changing doctrine, was doing so sitting at the last place in the banquet hall, which he himself selected on entering, for there is nothing Jesus preaches which he is not himself already practicing. And it was precisely this position as least of all that conferred on Jesus unrivalled authority and freedom to communicate to us unforgettably the puzzling but always glorious and liberating ways of God.  

God, Our Medicine and Life

And when we do fall, because we are weak or blind, then our courteous Lord touches us and encourages us and calls us; and then he wants us to realize our wretchedness and humbly take note of it. But he does not want us to remain in this state, nor does he want us to fret over our self-accusation, nor is it his will that we despair over ourselves; but he does want us to turn back to him with all speed. For he stands all alone and awaits us in sorrow and grief till we approach, and then he is quick to welcome us. For we are his joy and his delight, and he is our medicine and our life.

JULIAN OF NORWICH A Month With Julian of Norwich

The Passion of Christ

The contemplative life becomes awfully thin and drab if you go for several days at a time without thinking explicitly of the Passion of Christ. I do not mean, necessarily, meditating, but at least attending with love and humility to Christ on the Cross. For his Cross is the source of all of our life and without it prayer dries up and everything goes dead.

THOMAS MERTON The Sign of Jonas

To See God

The eye of the heart must be healed, and all impurities within it cleaned out, if we are to see God. As God humbled himself by becoming flesh in the Incarnation, we must humble ourselves making ourselves available to God, by stripping away the distractions that obstruct us from loving him. In the Incarnation, Jesus Christ shared in the experience of being human, uniting the human and Divine, so that we might return to God.

ST. AUGUSTINE

What is Expected of Us in This World

During the time immediately before and quite sometime after my conversion I thought that leading a religious life meant giving up all earthly things and having one's mind fixed on divine things only. Gradually, however, I learned that other things are expected of us in this world. I even believe that the deeper someone is drawn to God, the more he has to "get beyond himself" in this sense, that is, go into the world and carry divine life into it.

ST. TERESA BENEDICTA OF THE CROSS The Hidden Life: Collected Works of Edith Stein

Religion Lacking in Works

Be careful! Don't make your religion consist only of theoretical things. If a religion is lacking in works, it won't get you into the kingdom of heaven. The Lord has already said it: it is not the one who says Lord, Lord, the one who prays a great deal with beautiful prayers, who will enter the kingdom of heaven. It is rather the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. This is the true religion: not just remaining pure, but visiting widows and orphans. This is a biblical expression that means to concern yourself with those in need.

ST. OSCAR ROMERO Through The Year With Oscar Romero

Seeking God Where He Is

If only we realized how we complicate life, when in reality it is so simple. All our troubles come from this: that we do not know how to seek God where He is. We seek him far away, and all the while He is quite close to us. In Him we live, and move and have our being. This is true from the natural point of view, but above all from the supernatural. God is the soul of our soul: that is, the Principal that gives it life. It is there that we must seek Him, and it is there we shall find him ‘without end’.

A CARTHUSIAN They Speak By Silences

Giving Oneself

To give oneself to God, recklessly forgetful of self, not to take account of one's own individual life to allow full room for divine life, this is the profound motive, the principle, and the end of religious life. The more perfectly it is carried out, so much the richer is the divine life that fills the soul.

ST. TERESA BENEDICTA OF THE CROSS Thoughts of Edith Stein 

The Fixity of God

God and humanity are like two lovers who have missed their rendezvous. Each is there before the time, but each at a different place, and they wait and wait and wait. He stands motionless, nailed to the spot for the whole time…. The crucifixion of Christ is the image of this fixity of God.

SIMONE WEIL The Simone Weil Reader

Our Greatest Danger

Our greatest danger is not our sins, but our indifference. We must be in love with God. It is not so much to change what we are doing, but our intention, our motive. It is not sufficient that we refrain from insulting a person, we must love.

DOROTHY DAY The Catholic Worker, Jul/Aug 1943

Homily — 19th Sunday on O.T.

We are told that for those children who grow up in an atmosphere of abuse, addiction or violence; hyper-vigilance becomes routine. You learn to be constantly on guard and attentive to protect yourself. An adult could lose control; something is likely to go wrong; the situation could become dangerous in a flash. You have to be ready for anything. You learn vigilance at an early age because vigilance means survival. My sisters and brothers, the vigilance Our Lord invites us into this morning, is something quite different, far more benign, luxuriant and quite spacious, born of a deep confidence in God’s love for us. We are invited to be mindful of the nowness of God’s presence with us. Jesus invites to live in this now of the kingdom – a place where God is in charge, disposing all things suaviter, as Aquinas will insist; suaviter means that he is arranging everything gently, lovingly, smoothly. For if, as we believe, the kingdom will come to fullness in the age to come, Jesus’ plea is for us to believe and live within the reality that it is happening even now and that it can flourish only if we attentively allow God in. The “unexpected hour” is now; the Lord is coming toward us.

It is always worth waiting for someone you love. And as monks we’re made to live with that kind of expectation. Somehow our praying is our waiting, a constant vigil of the heart. It’s what we came for. And with loving expectation, the waiting is perhaps its own reward. We’re meant to live in incessant vigilance for Someone who is supremely worth our waiting. “Be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding,” Jesus tells us this morning. 

For he is like that master returning home at a very late hour from a wedding feast. Perhaps a bit tipsy with the wine that was in ample supply. He knocks at the door. And he’s so delighted at being welcomed at that late hour, that he giddily tells his servants (that’s us) to sit down. And in an amazing reversal, he our master waits on us. And it’s not just a light late-night snack but an all-out feast. He sets the table and invites us to recline. (That’s a signal word, for in Jesus’ day, reclining was only for banquets, daily meals were taken seated at a table.) The message is clear: God's promised One is here to feed his people with as much as they want. Jesus is presiding at the banquet in the kingdom.

And then in thinly coded language, Jesus goes on to insinuate that he is like a thief, a real sneak. “Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour when the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” He wants to break in. Having your house broken into means literally in the Greek, having it “burrowed through.” For in the Palestine of Jesus’ day, walls were made of mud bricks, and to break in all a thief had to do was dig through the wall. The message: Jesus is sneaking around trying to stage a break-in. He wants to come near; he’s trying to burrow through the thick wall of our resistance. That’s pretty sturdy material alright, and Mercy himself wants to blast right through, invade our space and suffuse it with his gracious presence. 

Vigilance is essential for us because the mystery of God’s presence is constantly revealed even as it is hidden. Jesus is always reversing things, trying to engage us in unexpected ways. Attentiveness is our way of being in the kingdom, because then with the eyes of faith, all of reality can become increasingly transparent to the surprising beauty of One who is always advancing toward us.

And in the end it seems to me, we are left with the greatest reversal of all – for it is God in Christ who is always waiting for us. He wants to wait on us, redeem us, unburden us. The question: Am I willing to bear in peace, the discomfort of being served so tenderly by Christ Jesus, as I come to see more and more clearly each day that as a sinner and a “repeat offender” I do not deserve such loving regard? 

Thank God,  it’s never been about what we deserve, or we’d all be in big trouble. Didn’t we learned that from the parable of the Prodigal Son? Remember that resentful older brother in the parable. He knows that his younger runaway brother does not deserve to be welcomed but disowned and punished for his disrespect and betrayal. And you know what, he’s absolutely right. But the Father doesn’t see it that way. The best robe, new shoes, the fatted calf, music and dancing; that’s what the Father wants. It makes no sense. But he’s been so very heartbroken, waiting and waiting for that boy to come back. And when he catches sight him, he runs out, panting, unembarrassed and heedless of losing his dignity; he hugs and kisses this lost son, burying his dear old face in the boy’s unwashed neck. My brothers and sisters, it’s never been about what we deserve. God is not fair. He is pure love, unrelenting, unmanageable, giddy with his joy over us his children. He is the one who waits; he will not stop loving, longing, and waiting, always waiting for us to come back to him, so he can serve us. It makes no sense. It’s not supposed to. Love makes no sense.

This is why we return here over and over- to let him wait on us. Liturgy means service, and it is first of all God’s service of us. Jesus has come to serve not be served. This is why we gather here. The divine Thief is always on the prowl; the Master is at the door. And so we open to him and with deep gratitude and humility we somehow have the sense to let go of our awful reserve and revel in our undeservedness and allow him to feed us with his best and most perfect gift.

God's Self-effacement

God is Almighty. But what is his power? It is the All-Powerlessness of Calvary that reveals the true nature of the All-Power of the infinite Being. The humility of love is the key: to show off, there was little need of power; to efface oneself one must be very powerful. God is unlimited power of self-effacement.

FRANÇOIS VARILLON The Humility and Suffering Of God

Arriving Together Before the Lord

You do not save your soul as you might save a treasured possession. You save it as you lose a treasured possession: in surrendering it. We must save ourselves collectively, we must arrive together before the good Lord. What would he say if we arrived before him, came home to him, without the others?

CHARLES PÉGUY

God’s Love is Not Earned

The most important thing you can say about God's love is that God loves us not because of anything we've done to earn that love, but because God, in total freedom, had decided to love us. At first sight, this doesn't seem to be very very inspiring; but if you reflect on it more deeply this thought can affect and influence your life greatly. We are inclined to see our whole existence in terms of quid pro quo. We assume that people will be nice to us if we are nice to them; that they will help us if we help them; that they will invite us if we invite them; that they will love us if we love them. And so the conviction is deeply rooted in us that being loved is something you have to earn. In our pragmatic and utilitarian times this conviction has become even stronger. We can scarcely conceive of getting something for nothing. Everything has to be worked for, even a kind word, an expression of gratitude, a sign of affection.

HENRI NOUWEN In My Own Words

Affliction

In order to have the strength to contemplate affliction when we are afflicted, we need supernatural bread.

SIMONE WEIL Gravity and Grace

The Past and the Present

The past casts its shadow over the present whenever we brood about old failures and yesterday's choices. Of course we should ask God's forgiveness for our faults and should learn from them where appropriate. But once we've said we're sorry and meant it, that is enough. While seeking to make amends where possible for the harm we have caused, most of the time we should simply leave things in God's hands, trusting him to put everything right. We must put a stop to attitudes or thoughts that keep us from living trustingly in the present moment.

JACQUES PHILIPPE Interior Freedom

Where God’s Love is Concealed

So every day God works with us, calling us to repentance: “Oh that today you would hear his voice: Harden not your hearts…" (Ps 95:7-8). God speaks in various ways. He speaks through his Word, through the people with whom we live, through all sorts of circumstances, joyful and painful. We dread the latter especially. We know all too well that God has something to say to us in affliction, sickness, death or misfortune. If we still sense this fear in our heart, it is because as yet we have eyes only for the wrath of God, and this means we have not yet discovered how, behind the external signs of wrath, his immeasurable love is concealed.

ANDRÉ LOUF Tuning Into Grace 

Holy Liberty of Spirit

I have noticed that when we are very careful to mortify and humble ourselves in everything, we sometimes become depressed and less ready to serve God. This is a temptation which we can conquer by thinking that God only asks these things of us through love. We should aim at humbling ourselves to please God as a good friend tries to please his friend, or a son his father. There must be no constraint but a holy liberty of spirit, for this liberty is one of the best signs of true love. It is easy to do things which we know will please one whom we love.

ST. CLAUDE DE LA COLOMBIÈRE