“Where are you?”

Sr. Dorcee, beloved4 Comments

“See where he stands behind our wall.  He looks in at the window, he peers through the lattice.”  (Song of Songs 2.9)

This is the point of Lent: to open up to our Beloved who is looking in at us through the window.  Fr. Blaise Arminjon writes:  “For if God is love, there can only be in the final analysis a single sin: not to love, to refuse to open oneself to the waiting love.”  After Adam and Eve sinned, the first words of God to them were “Where are you?” (Gen 3.9)  God is all about relationship.  He experienced the loss of relationship with Adam and Eve.  His first words to them were not: “What did you do?” but “Where are you?”  And that is what Lent is supposed to be all about for us: our relationship with Him, not what we have done.  (If we concentrate on relationship, the other will fall in  line.) So listen to Him saying to you: “Where are you?”  Hear His desire to coax you out from wherever you may be hiding from Him.  Take a moment, even now, to gaze at Him gazing at you through the lattice and listen to what He speaks to your heart . . .

The best form of mortification

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

One other wonderful piece of advice to consider as you prepare for Lent:

Blosius, a great Benedictine mystic, says that the best form of mortification is to accept with all our heart, in spite of our repugnance, all that God sends or permits, good and evil, joy and suffering. (Dom Marion)

Worth reading through again, slowly.  This may be the hardest mortification you ever choose.

Lenten resolutions

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As you prayerfully consider Lent, pay close attention to these two pieces of sage advice from St. Jose Maria Escriva:

Choose mortifications that don’t mortify others.

A smile is often the best mortification.

And I urge you again to look first to those things that impede your knowledge of God’s incredible love for you. Perhaps your Lenten resolution should simply be to stand vulnerable in prayer before His love for five minutes a day or to read a Scripture verse that encourages you in the hope of His love.

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.  (Therese)

Lent is coming

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

Lent is coming.  To be honest, my usual response to that thought is one of clutching inside.  I suspect that is not the best response, and every year I keep working at coming to more of an understanding of what perhaps God’s mind is on this season rather than my limited understanding or skewed understanding.  I, like most Catholics who grew up when I did, tend to approach Lent, I think, from the angle of what I need to give up for Lent. What I become convinced of more and more each year is that God’s priority for Lent is not that.  His priority is that we grow in our relationship with Him.  Period.  The only things worth giving up are those that impede our relationship with Him.  Read this by Fr. Peter John Cameron to start you thinking about perhaps a different Lenten approach:

Here’s what to give up this Lent: the doubt that goes, “I can never get closer to God because I’m too sinful, too flawed, too weak.”  This is a lethal attitude, for it based on the false presumption that we can possess something of our own–that does not come from God–by which we can please God.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  Only what is from God can please God.  But as long as such error persists, we estrange ourselves from God.  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. . . .

His ear to our hearts

Sr. Dorcee, beloved3 Comments

I’ve posted before about the difference between grumbling and lamenting.  I just ran into another helpful delineation:

Lament is a cry of belief in a good God, a God who has His ear to our hearts, a God who transfigures the ugly into beauty.  Complaint is the bitter howl of unbelief in any benevolent God in this moment, a distrust in the love-beat of the Father’s heart.  (Ann Voskamp)

For more on this, see “Am I grumbling?” and “Are you still on the dance floor?”

Try it for yourself

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A challenge from Peter Kreeft:

No one who ever said to God, “Thy will be done,” and meant it with his heart, ever failed to find joy–not just in heaven, or even down the road in the future in this world, but in this moment at every moment.  Every other Christian who has ever lived has found exactly the same thing in his own experience.  It is an experiment that has been performed over and over again billions of times, always with the same result.

Try it for yourself.

Forgiveness

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I just added a book to the “What I’m recommending at the moment” tab above.  This is the second time I’m reading Philip Yancey’s What’s So Amazing About Grace.  I have benefited from many of his books.  This book is about forgiveness, full of stories and full of hope.  A book that gently cuts you to the heart.  Philip is never one to skirt around the difficult questions, and that’s why I appreciate him so much.  I may not always agree with him, but I admire his courage.

A couple of excerpts:

Charles Williams has said of the Lord’s Prayer, “No word in English carries a greater possibility of terror than the little word ‘as’ in that clause.” [“Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”]

Henri Nouwen, who defines forgiveness as “love practiced among people who love poorly,” describes the process at work:

I have often said, “I forgive you,” but even as I said these words my heart remained angry or resentful.  I still wanted to hear the story that tells me that I was right after all; I still wanted to hear apologies and excuses; I still wanted the satisfaction of receiving some praise in return–if only the praise for being so forgiving!

But God’s forgiveness is unconditional; it comes from a heart that does not demand anything for itself, a heart that is completely empty of self-seeking.  It is this divine forgiveness that I have to practice in my daily life.  It calls me to keep stepping over all my arguments that say forgiveness is unwise, unhealthy, and impractical.  It challenges me to step over all my needs for gratitude and compliments.  Finally, it demands of me that I step over that wounded part of my heart that feels hurt and wronged and that wants to stay in control and put a few conditions between me and the one whom I am asked to forgive.