“Only when we know that we have nothing of our own to show for our service of God, that we have no offering to make but our failures, sins, helplessness and folly are we made empty enough to be restocked with new graces.”
(Dom Hubert van Zeller)
- Comment
- Reblog
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Witnesses to Hope 
That seems very true.
WordPress always encourage me to “Like” something that I read and so I did when I read your quote from Dom Hubert this morning. But it seems to me that if I am to experience being open to grace in the way he describes then I will not “like” the journey that takes me there at all. I have spent so much of my life investing it in achievement and success that any alternative will seem only to be a failed life. Perhaps, even worse, other people might perceive it as a failed life. “Poor old Stephen,” they say in pitying tones, “he showed such promise but it all came to nothing.” Dom Hubert invites me to look over the story of my life and to see it as “failure, sin, helplessness and folly”. If it were not for the promise of new graces then I would see him as one who had joined the pitying voices but in this I see something very different. One who calls me to embrace the reality of myself that Dom Hubert describes and to offer it to God. I wonder what the graces will look like? I rather suspect that they will not be a restoration of my old illusions but something quite new.
Thank you for this beautiful comment, Stephen. God is indeed doing a great work in “poor old” Stephen’s soul, and it is a beautiful work.