You are priceless
Author: Sr. Dorcee, beloved
I am the one whom Jesus loves.
Put yourself in this woman’s place
Jesus does not want our sins, our weaknesses and faults, to keep us from coming to Him, to keep us from intimacy with Him. I post again this painting by James Tissot. Put yourself in this woman’s place, a great sinner. Touch His feet, kiss His feet. And see the Lord reaching out to you in His tender love.
He said to Simon the Pharisee, “You gave me no kiss . . . ” (Lk 7.45). The Lord of Love will miss your kiss if you don’t draw near to Him . . .
At the top of the stairs
On those days when I think, “This is never going to change in me”, the Holy Spirit often reminds me of these words of St. Thérèse:
“At the top of the stairs He is looking at your lovingly. Soon conquered by your vain efforts, He will come down Himself, and taking you in His arms, will carry you forever into His kingdom where you will not leave Him again. But if you stop lifting your little foot, He will leave you on earth for a long time.”
Human doings
Something to think about:
“We are so used to being busy that we treat it as an essential characteristic of the good life. Ask people how they are doing and they will often answer by telling you how busy they are. It has become a mark of success–as if someone who is not busy must certainly be leading an unfulfilling and unsuccessful life. If we are busy, we feel that life is meaningful.
“Human beings have become human doings. Simply being feels like not enough–perhaps even personal failure. . . . But our problem is deeper than busyness. Tragically, we live much of our lives on automatic pilot. we go through our days as sleep walkers–unaware of God’s presence, inattentive to God’s gifts and invitations, and failing to be present to either ourselves or God. We fail to notice God in the ordinary events of our ordinary days. God is present–in the world around us, in the people whom we encounter and in our work. Sadly, it we who are absent.” (Juliet Benner, Contemplative Vision)
“God desired a harlot . . .”
As some of you know, I have a little book of art pictures and quotes that I periodically use for meditation. I have been pondering the picture below of the sinful woman anointing Jesus’ feet (James Tissot). And below it is a beautiful quote from John Chrysostom describing the love of God for us, each of whom is indeed the sinful woman.
“God desired a harlot, and how does He act? He does not send to her any of His servants. He does not send any angels or archangels, cherubim or seraphim. No, He Himself draws near to the one He loves, and He does not take her to Heaven, for He could not bring a harlot to Heaven, and therefore He Himself comes down to earth, to the harlot, and is not ashamed. He comes to her secret dwelling place and beholds her in her drunkenness. And how does He come? Not in the bare essence of His original nature, but in the guise of one whom the harlot is seeking, in order that she might not be afraid when she sees Him, and will not run away, and escape Him. He comes to the harlot as a man. And how does He become this? He is conceived in the womb, He grows little by little, as we do, and has intercourse with human nature. And He finds this harlot thick with sores and oppressed by devils. How does He act? He draws nigh to her. She sees Him and flees away. He calls the wise man, saying, ‘Why are you afraid? I am not a judge, but a physician. I come not to judge the world, but to save the world.’ Straightway He calls the wise men, for are not the wise man the immediate first fruits of His coming? They come and worship Him, and then the harlot herself comes and is transformed into a maiden. The Canaanite woman comes and partakes of His love. And how does He act? He takes the sinner and espouses her to Himself, and gives her the signet ring of the Holy Spirit as a seal between them.” (John Chrysostom)
What wondrous love is this!
“It was because a man lay on the road . . .”
A painting or a song can be so powerful. The picture below can be found on the cover of the first volume of Fire of Mercy by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, a Trappist monk. I have been meditating on it this Lent. I know I have posted about this picture before, but can’t help sharing it with you again.
This is how the back of the book describes this picture:
The book’s cover portrays Christ as the Good Samaritan in an illumination taken from the mid sixth-century Syrian Codex Rossanensis. The fire of God’s mercy, poured out without reserve by the Father into the Heart of his incarnate Word, impels the Son’s eager gaze earthwards. Christ Jesus, Son of God and Son of Mary, the living ‘image of the invisible God’ in whom ‘the whole fullness of divinity dwells bodily’ (Colossians 1:15, 2:9), bends down his sun-like nimbus—the very splendor of his glory, inscribed with the cross of his suffering—in a full ninety-degree angle, to show the perfection of His descent among us. The eternal Lord of the ages thus moves into position to nurse with divine tenderness the green body of decaying humanity, prostrate with festering wounds: ‘Through the tender mercy of our God, the Dawn from on high has visited us, to give knowledge of salvation to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death’ (Luke 2:78f). For his part, the dazzling angel has found a new mode of praise: to stand by his Master, marveling and ministering as he holds the gold bowl of grace and compassion, awestruck at the depth of the Word’s condescension. What even angelic hands cannot touch unveiled, that Christ lavishes with open gesture upon the flesh and soul of his beloved brother, sin-wounded man.
Sometimes I just sit and meditate on how I am that green man lying in the road and try to imagine Christ standing over me pouring out His mercy–that even the angels cannot touch–upon me. Peguy says: “It was because a man lay on the road that a Samaritan picked him up.” It is because we lay on the road that Christ picks us up . . .
1000 years is as one day
See this plant? It was grown from seeds brought back to life. No big deal, you might think. Well, the seeds were 32,000 years old! They “had been entirely encased in ice, were unearthed from 124 feet (38 meters) below the permafrost, surrounded by layers that included mammoth, bison, and woolly rhinoceros bones.” According to National Geographic: “A Russian team discovered a seed cache of Silene stenophylla, a flowering plant native to Siberia, that had been buried by an Ice Age squirrel near the banks of the Kolyma River. Radiocarbon dating confirmed that the seeds were 32,000 years old.”
Sooooooooo, if you are tempted to hopelessness about areas in your life that seem to be taking forever to change . . . or about people that you know whose lives seem irreparable, have hope! To the Lord, a thousand years is as one day, and as we well know, He can bring the dead to life. All in His own time . . .
What should I give up for Lent?
I have the answer for you! I’d like to share a short article I wrote for The Catholic Times last year:
“So . . . what are you giving up for Lent?” The best all-time answer I’ve ever heard to that question comes from Fr. John Peter Cameron, editor of Magnificat: “Here’s what to give up for Lent: the doubt that goes, ‘I can never get closer to God because I’m too sinful, too flawed, too weak.’” Lent really is not about giving up, but about receiving. Fr. John goes on to say: “Lent is not about lamenting our inadequacy. Rather, it is a graced moment to receive from God what he is eager to give us so that we can live the friendship with him that he desires. . . .”
This approach requires a major change of attitude on most of our parts. We are so geared up for what we should do for God, when what is uppermost in the Lord’s mind is his desire to draw near to us, to give himself to us. If what we decide to give up would, in fact, encourage greater friendship with him, that would be one thing, but for many of us, we fall too readily into the following two categories. Either we succeed in doing what we’ve set out to do and just grow stronger in our pride and self-sufficiency, and in a real sense, further from God. Or we fail and grow less confident in God’s mercy. “How could I expect him to show me mercy after I fail to do one simple thing like giving up chocolate for Lent? I mean, how hard is that?”
Of course, I’m not saying that self-discipline isn’t important or that chocolate in someone’s life may not indeed be a stumbling block in his relationship with God, but for so many of us, the main obstacle we face is our lack of confidence in God’s goodness and his love for us. We hide from him, as Adam & Eve did after they sinned. We think that we can’t come to him unless we’ve got everything together. But notice God’s first words to them after their fall. They were not: “What have you done?!” but “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9)After listening to the serpent, Adam and Eve doubted his goodness rather than placing their trust in his unbounded mercy. Otherwise, they would have run to him like the prodigal son to his father. His first concern was the restoration of relationship with them.
St. Thérèse encourages us along these lines of trust: “Sanctity does not consist in this or that practice, it consists in a disposition of heart which makes us humble and little in the eyes of God, conscious of our weakness but boldly confident in his goodness as Father.” (emphasis added)
Again, I am not minimizing the seriousness of sin. What I am saying is that the first step, and the most important one, is dealing with mistrust in the goodness of God toward us.
So this Lent, you might reconsider what you should give up. Perhaps it should be mistrust or doubt of the Lord’s goodness towards you. Look at the obstacles in the way you think about your relationship with Him. Listen to the Father calling out to you: “Where are you?” If you’re hiding because of lack of confidence in His goodness, try just taking one small step toward Him. Come out from behind the bushes of doubt. Put aside the sin of mistrust and you might be surprised to see Him running toward you with arms wide open.
Why? Why? Why?
[I was out of town and then came down with a nasty head cold . . . thus, my absence this past week.]
Today’s reading from Amy Carmichael’s Whispers of Power:
Mt 11.6 And blessed is he, who shall not be offended in Me.
All of us are sometimes troubled by questions. Why is the secret of healing not opened more fully? Why is that key not put into wise and loving hands? Why does He whose touch has not lost its ancient power not come immediately and touch and heal? Why have the wicked such awful power? Why are we ourselves sometimes like the little ship on the sea of Galilee beaten by the winds? And even after we have heard our dear Lord’s Peace, be still, why is it that there is not always instantly a great calm, a lasting calm? Why do the winds return again?
We could go on forever, piling question on question. Why? Why? Why?
But faith is not “trusting God when we understand His ways”–there is no need for faith then. Faith is trusting when nothing is explained. Faith rests under the Unexplained. Faith enters into the deep places of our Lord’s words. And blessed is he, who shall not be offended in Me. Faith, having entered into those deep places, stays there in peace.
Re-reading such a good book
I am re-reading One Thousand Gifts for the third time–the second being immediately after I finished it the first time. Have I told you how much this book has changed my life? 😉 And I keep coming across things I want to quote here . . . but it wouldn’t really be fair to Ann Voskamp for me to do that, would it? If you haven’t read it yet, you really must. I haven’t yet come across anyone who hasn’t been so glad to have read it.
Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world. ~Sarah Ban Breathnach
Witnesses to Hope 