Know this: You should judge every person by his merits. Even someone who seems to be completely wicked, you must search and find that little speck of good, for in that place, he is not wicked. By this you will raise him up, and help him return to G-d. And you must also do this for yourself, finding your own good points, one after the other, and raising yourself up. This is how melodies are made, note after note.
The gospel today (about the Good Samaritan) brought the picture below to mind. It can be found on the cover of Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis’ commentary on St. Matthew’s Gospel. (See Books tab above.) 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 . . .
“Have you ever looked back over a month and felt more than a little disheartened over the failures and mistakes–the blots on the page you had meant to keep so white?” (Amy Carmichael)
Another gem from Amy Carmichael–she’s always such a witness to hope for me:
Isaiah 52.12 The God of Israel will be your rear guard.
Have you ever looked back over a month and felt more than a little disheartened over the failures and mistakes–the blots on the page you had meant to keep so white?
There is a most beautiful and tender meaning in the words “rear guard” which again and again has comforted me. It may be new to some of you. It means to gather. The Revised Version margin has, to gather you up. An army as it goes forth into new territory needs a Vanguard to protect the van [Note: a van is the foremost or front division of an army], and a Rearguard to protect the rear, so our glorious God use us these two words in speaking of His loving work to us-ward. The Lord will go before us. Our Vanguard is the Lord. And the Lord God of Israel will be our Rearguard–following after, not only to defend us, should the enemy attack in the rear, as he often does, but to gather us up if we flag and are wary because of the way. And if He gathers us up, He gathers up also the things we have dropped, our poor fallen resolutions, mistakes, everything, and deals with them Himself. There is eternal love and tenderness in these dear words, “The Lord God of Israel shall gather you up.” Not only that, The glory of the Lord shall be your Rear guard (Is. 58.8).
So, as we travel on into another month we need not fear, Eternal Love is our Vanguard, the glory of Eternal Love is our Rearguard. The everlasting Arms of Everlasting Love shall gather us up.
St. John of the Cross has three chapters in his Spiritual Canticle in which he writes about God’s look of love. It is God looking at us in love that makes us lovable and beautiful. “With God, to gaze at is to love.” (SC 31.5) And it is in His looking at us, loving us unconditionally, that we, in turn, become beautiful.
By infusing his grace in the soul, God makes it worthy and capable of his love. (SC 32.5)
He does not love things because of what they are in themselves. With God, to love the soul is to put her somehow in himself and to make her his equal. (SC 32.6)
St. John says that God’s gaze of love produces four things in our souls: “it cleanses, endows with grace, enriches, and illumines.” (SC 33.1) And as God gazes on us–as we let ourselves be gazed upon–we become beautiful, and then that beauty draws His gaze even more towards us, and the more He gazes upon us, the more beautiful we become, and so on and so on. “When God beholds the soul made attractive through grace, he is impelled to grant her more grace.” (SC 33.7)
Who can express how much God exalts the soul that pleases him? [And remember we please Him best when we let Him look at us with His love.] Who can express how much God exalts the soul that pleases him? It is impossible to do so, nor can this even be imagined, for after all, he does this as God, to show who he is. (SC 33.8) [emphasis added]
God is Love. For Him to be is to love. So the more we let Him, give Him permission, turn our souls toward Him, the more we are letting Him be God, so to speak.
Fr. Conrad de Meester says God has no needs, but if He did, it would be to love . . . So let Him love you . . .
I’m still thinking about that 20 minute movie I recommended yesterday. (I had a chance to watch it again last night with Sr. Sarah.) This extract from a book by Maria Boulding is another attempt at expressing the point of the movie:
The personal history of each one of us is precious to him. He is more willing to forgive our sins than we are to ask forgiveness, and he is well able to redeem our deficiencies too. We shall not spend eternity kicking ourselves for opportunities lost, grace wasted and love refused. How he can make these things good is beyond our understanding, but in some way the whole of it will be taken up into Christ. Some lines scribbled in the margin of a fourteenth-century manuscript convey an unknown scribe’s insight into this mystery:
He abideth patiently,
he understandeth mercifully,
he forgiveth easily,
he forgetteth utterly.
All the positive things will be taken up into Christ, to be saved in all their reality and transfigured in him: the love that we have given and received, the moments of aching beauty, the longing and the pain, the laughter and surprise, the plain plodding on . . . . Nothing is lost in him. All the great loves, all the heroism, all the struggle to make life more human, all the wrong turnings people have taken in their search, the times when a light more than human seemed for a while to play over human lives and those lives became legend, the poetry of the particular, the unrepeatable beauty, the fidelity to a vision that demanded all. In Christ all these things will be affirmed and redeemed, to become part of our shared joy, and his. (Maria Boulding, The Coming of God, p. 161)
“I found rest in remembering the hands laid on every one of us, not one of us overlooked, and the hands laid upon us are wounded hands.” (Amy Carmichael)
Luke 4:40 He laid His hands on every one of them, and healed them.
This verse took life for me one day lately. I was reading in the Revised Version and looked up the Authorized, to see if I was reading something new, for it felt new. But no, I must have read it hundreds of times before. On every one of them. It comforted me to know that He does not look upon us as a mass, but as separate needy souls. I remembered the terrific attack that is always on the love that should hold us together, and I read over and over again John 15.9-17. I know well that the devil hates and fears strong love. If he can weaken us there, all goes. For us, to weaken means to perish. I found rest in remembering the hands laid on every one of us, not one of us overlooked, and the hands laid upon us are wounded hands.
The poem I have to share with you this Sunday is another by Jessica Powers:
The Garments of God
God sits on a chair of darkness in my soul.
He is God alone, supreme in His majesty.
I sit at His feet, a child in the dark beside Him;
my joy is aware of His glance and my sorrow is tempted
to nest on the thought that His face is turned from me.
He is clothed in the robes of His mercy, voluminous garments–
not velvet or silk and affable to the touch,
but fabric strong for a frantic hand to clutch,
and I hold to it fast with the fingers of my will.
Here is my cry of faith, my deep avowal
to the Divinity that I am but dust.
Here is the loud profession of my trust.
I need not go abroad
to the hills of speech or the hinterlands of music
for a crier to walk in my soul where all is still.
I have this potent prayer through good or ill:
here in the dark I clutch the garments of God.
Today is the anniversary of my final vows to our community, The Servants of God’s Love. This morning before Mass I picked up a book I am reading–for the second or third time–Mercy in Weakness, by Andre Louf. This is what I read: “Jesus called to him those whom he himself wanted” (Mk 3:13). Of course, this refers to Jesus’ calling of the twelve apostles, but isn’t it just as true for us, each of us–for, yes, He called me to religious life, but it is just as true that He called you to whatever you said yes to in your own lives. The RSV says: “those whom he desired”. Think about that today: God called you, and me, out of desire for you.
A person was simply selected because Jesus preferred him, without any further motives. Jesus chooses the rich and the poor, Jewish nationalists and collaborators, ordinary people and fishermen. At the moment of selection what matters is not what these people are. He simply prefers them because he loves them, each one individually. Nothing other than Jesus’ love and preference explains this selection.
Calling of St. Peter and St. Andrew (James Tissot)
He prefers you because He loves you, short and simple. And not just when He called you. Even now.
On the occasion of my 25th anniversary of my Final Profession, I had the opportunity of choosing the music for the Mass of celebration. For the closing hymn, I chose the following song. It’s an anonymous poem put to music by one of our sisters. The language is a little quaint, but the message is so true for each of us–and yet we forget it all too often. All of our life is but a response to Someone who has always loved us first.
I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew
he moved my soul to seek Him, seeking me.
It was not I that found, O Savior true.
No, I was found, found by Thee.
Thou didst reach forth Thy hand and mine enfold.
I walked and sank not on the stormy sea.
‘Twas not so much that I on Thee took hold,
as Thou, dear Lord, on me.
I find, I walk, I love, but O the whole
of love is but my answer, Lord, to Thee!
For Thou were long beforehand with my soul.
Always Thou lovedst me.
I was thinking this morning of introducing you to Jessica Powers, a discalced Carmelite nun who wrote poetry. Which poem to share with you first, for whichever I choose will form an opinion of her? I’ll start with the first in the compilation, The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers:
The Mercy of God
I am copying down in a book from my heart’s archives
the day that I ceased to fear God with a shadowy fear.
Would you name it the day that I measured my column of virtue
and sighted through windows of merit a crown that was near?
Ah, no, it was rather the day I began to see truly
that I came forth from nothing and ever toward nothingness tend,
that the works of my hands are a foolishness wrought in the presence
of the worthiest king in a kingdom that shall never end.
I rose up from the acres of self that I tended with passion
and defended with flurries of pride;
I walked out of myself and went into the woods of God’s mercy,
and here I abide.
There is greenness and calmness and coolness, a soft leafy covering
from the judgment of sun overhead,
and the hush of His peace, and the moss of His mercy to tread.
I have naught but my will seeking God; even love burning in me
is a fragment of infinite loving and never my own.
And I fear God no more; I go forward to wander forever
in a wilderness made of His infinite mercy alone.
This is how the back of the book describes this picture:
Witnesses to Hope 