Things Worth Dying For

Dying is a difficult fight.  Archbishop Charles Chaput sheds light on this struggle in his book, Things Worth Dying For.  What makes dying more difficult in our own days is that we live in a culture of
death.  This culture does not know the value of life and the civilization that it leads to lacks love. This is unmasked when we face our own mortality, when we are seized by the awareness that our time in this life is very short. 

When we realize that death is near, something deeper in us kicks in and we want to fight for life. This is not always the effort to live longer. It is a struggle for meaning and our integrity. For death confronts us with meaninglessness and disintegration.  It alienates our bodies from its generative power, our souls from our bodies, and our life from this world. We find ourselves haunted by memories that we have not yet dealt with and we feel the need to confront these -- to find the truth, to find meaning, to find mercy.

Sometimes, as a man dies, there are voices that try to shame him because he fights for life. Not only in the inner circle, these voices echo among the culturally powerful that are themselves afraid of death. Yet, faith unleashes a different power, one that confounds and consoles at once. The Word of God is not silenced by any cacophony of fear, shame, and anger. His Mercy is forever. 

In the majesty of His splendor, the Most High is not unconcerned about the trials faced by the dying. He knows the alone-ness of death, its terrible tedium. He knows that it takes courage to die well - for both the person dying as well for the family and friends who support him. If he who dies is haunted by memories, questions and disappointments, a man's death is still the most supreme moment of his life, his final offering to God. God waits for us to surrender the puzzles of our heart and He can make sense out of them all. The gift of faith, no matter how frail it may be, is enough to make this offering right and just, acceptable to the Lord.

The Lord has destroyed death by death, and at one's own death, the Fire of the Holy Spirit burns the brighter as we cling to the Lord by faith.  The Lord never abandons those who call to Him in this final battle. He rages with them against death and gives a love that is stronger than death.  This Bridegroom does not neglect the Bride for whom He laid down His Life. If shepherds abandon the sheep, this Shepherd stands firm. The Son of the Father has taken up our cause and the Fire of the Holy Spirit burns bright in this terrible darkness because the Holy Trinity His implicated Himself in our plight. 

God's Light and Proportion according to Saint Teresa

"The light God grants you from time to time concerning spiritual joys is a special mercy. His Majesty comforts us in proportion to our trials. Since yours are great, so are His favors."
Saint Teresa of Avila, November 1576.

Father Gracian, to whom Saint Teresa addressed the words above, was a competent and industrious leader. But Teresa wants him to focus on divine mercy, divine love implicated with us in our plight. God gives “light" when we face difficult challenges in His service. Concerned that we persevere when circumstances seem impossible to bear, she knows that the Lord gives us ground to stand on. Everything else in our lives may be completely shaken, but He remains, ever more steadfast for us. Saint Teresa observes that the Lord “comforts us in proportion to our trials.”

We can take this proportion of comfort in trial in two ways.  On one hand, there is a sense of consolation that comes from being productive for the Lord even when we are faced with opposition or difficult circumstances.  Father Gracian was probably familiar with this grace -- even as opposition to the reform grew, God continued to do great things through him. The day would come however when all his achievements for the reform would seem undone, even wasted.

We can also consider this “proportion” in terms of our awareness of God’s presence. While all things are passing God never changes. He is always coming to us in wonderful new ways by grace.  Saint Teresa would probably propose this second kind of consolation as the most important.

God never comes in the way we expect Him -- He exceeds all expectations. Never passive or aloof, He is always active and personally implicated in our concerns.  When darkness seems to prevail, with dawning brightness, He purifies and expands the soul, opening up new horizons in our hearts, and this with even greater delicacy and power the more intense and frequent our trials.

Without faith, such divine brightness remains unseen. His light exceeds our natural powers, overshadowing them in glory. When, however, we seek His presence dwelling in our hearts and choose to live by His love, He uses all kinds of trails and difficulties only to take us ever deeper into the dwelling He has prepared for us.

This mysterious “light” and this sacred “proportion” help us discover the wonder of our Almighty Father. He waits for us at the intersection of human suffering and divine love -- the mystery of the Cross. He is not limited by what is easiest and most comfortable.  He does not confine Himself to the most convenient or successful.  Within the limits of human frailties and needs, lowliness and simplicity, humility and reverence, Saint Teresa knows that His paternal tenderness in limitless glory abides.  

The Heart of the Father and the Gift of Freedom

God the Father delights in the freedom He created each soul to live in.    Every time anyone freely chooses to move toward this loving freedom, the Eternal Father savors the wonderful courage and generosity that such a solemn decision reflects.  Mercy and consolation are firmly established, even in great trials, because of what the Father contemplates when He beholds this glory.

This same reality delighted His heart when His only begotten Son animated his own human will with the possibility of such divine liberty.  The Father gloried in His Son announcing in this same freedom the fullness of love's saving truth even to His last wordless breath on the Cross - such is the magnitude of this inexhaustible gift! And now, by this very work of redemption, the Eternal Father rejoices with His Son to pour out the Spirit of Freedom in ways unimaginable, defying all calculation, exceeding every expectation.

At once Living Waters and Living Flame, the Father knows this wave of freedom fills everything with life, establishes relation and harmony, and flows through the unrepeatable circumstances of this present moment.  In a flash of hidden transformation, converting and subverting every principality and power, this Divine Breath submits under freedom's ideal law every psychological, social and physical force.  And when this jubilation is shared by someone who is vulnerable enough to be freely moved by such an excess of love - it is a mystery so beautiful that even heaven holds its breath, and this tired old world, completely caught by surprise, is lifted up by a sudden and invincible surge of pure glory.

Faith on the Way

What does a pilgrim find in Spain?

A land of paradox.   Extremely modern communist style apartments can rise above very ancient and warmer architectural forms on the same street.  Miles of the old primitive path are interrupted by brand new roads or in other places bordered by electric fences (a deterrent for livestock or pilgrims or both).   Beautiful silence is sometimes swallowed by the droning of "power generating" windmills.  The spirit of Don Quixote and the spirit of materialism, idealism and cynicism, faith and skepticism, ancient Catholicism and new religions of drug culture, simplicity of rural living and the complexity of over technologized souls, joy and sorrow; all of these movements one picks up on while treading the via primitiva.

Asturias was very beautiful but the chapels and sanctuaries were all locked or else in ruins.   This made finding a place for daily mass very difficult and, really, our greatest hardship.  Now in Galacia, chapels and masses are a little more available.

The other hardship which we are still contending with is the walk itself ... About 18 miles a day.  The body adjusts to this.   And there are only two days to go.  Still, more than half way and drawing closer to Santiago, I still find the last three miles always a little more difficult, but because of that, the very best for prayer.  

It is not a deep mental prayer of insight, or or delving introspection, but a prayer of intercession that comes easiest, "I offer this hundred yards  in reparation for the scandal I caused in the hearts of others...please let them know your love and draw them close to you even in the face of my failure to witness- because no matter how great my sin, your love is greater." 

Or else "remember my friend who died.  His life was filled with so much ambiguity and difficulty, but you were with him through it all. Now, as he stands before you, let this little act of love I offer with my feet open up the floodgates of your mercy on him."  

Or again, "I offer this stretch of path in thanksgiving for all the blessings you have lavished on meand my family.  I did nothing to deserve them.  But you blessed us anyway.  Let these steps be for your glory ..." 

The one phrase however that returns time and again is "Into your hands I commend my spirit.  With this step, I give myself to you completely, I abandon myself to you, with all the love of my heart, with total confidence, for you are my Father."

As I wrote this reflection in the Albergue, in the room next to me, graduate student Lucy Ridsdale's voice echoed over the 1970s pop song playing on the local radio. It was paradox: sachrine tunes suddenly overshadowed by something deeper and richer, and more fully human.  Everyone stopped.  The radio was turned off.  One young man broke down in tears.

I will post that recording in the future but here is a rendition of the chant dedicated to St James, sung in Santiago almost 800 years ago, when Saint Francis trod this path during another age of paradox and contradiction, penance and renewal: 

http://chantblog.blogspot.com.es/2013/07/o-adiutor-omnium-seculorum.html 

The Spiritual Liberty of Holy Obedience

Saint Hildegard von Bingen contemplated the origin of evil in terms of disobedience.  Satan believed he could begin what he wished because he presumed he could finish what he had begun.  He invented his own schemes and programs against the plan of God because he did not believe he needed the Lord for his existence.   Because he was not open to God's will, Satan is entrapped in a lower existence, imprisoned in currents of unredeemable chaos below this world.  Hildegard sees how the Ancient Adversary is at work to lure and coerce into this same pit all those whose lives he invades and touches.

Obedience begins with the realization that one cannot bring into completion the work God has begun.   The ambiguity surrounding this life is beyond human capacity to understand or master, and left to ourselves, we are always at risk of being mastered by it.  Following our own whims is not enough because even the whims of the heart are subject to this confusion.  Our dignity, our integrity, our existence require firm ground on which to stand, or they all fall.  This understanding, this saving truth is found somewhere beyond our natural capacities, from Someone above us, who comes down to us, who calls to us and who waits for us to welcome Him.

Rather than allowing oneself to be consumed with the confusion of doing what one wishes, we only begin to redeem the ambiguity of life by searching out the most appropriate way of serving the Lord who reveals Himself to us.  He does not coerce or manipulate or threaten in anger.  He humbly invites. He gently warns and patiently corrects.  He thoughtfully questions.  He appeals to our holy freedom because our free decisions to love delight Him more than anything else.

He who yearns for the free response of our humanity works through human freedom, inviting his friends to help us hear His voice.  He who is Love Himself reveals Himself through those whom He has entrusted with preaching the Gospel, teaching sacred doctrine, and directing us with His authority.  Ministers of the Gospel, spouses and parents, missionaries, catechists, and so many others share in this great work.  Through these frail human instruments, His divine power is manifest.  If we persevere in trusting Him to show us Himself through them, our life becomes the very prayer He taught us to say: On Earth as it is in Heaven.

To be obedient in this sense is to learn to listen, to hear the voice of God resound in our hearts and to act on it.   Obedience here is a matter of being vulnerable to the mind of God revealed on the tongues of men and women, allowing His mind to call into question one's own mind on things through their words.  The paradox of this obedience to what God reveals through frail human instruments here below is that the Word of the Father who is from above lifts up those who cling to Him into divine freedom.  This spiritual liberty of holy obedience delights in an unvanquished glory that rules over all the ambiguity and confusion in this world and below it.  Even when such love is subject to every kind of trial and hardship, it is subject only to God.

The Freedom of God in Our Freedom

Sometimes we look at religious observance as a kind of holy imposition, a yoke, a burden.  We can even look being observant as an inconvenience to which we submit as if we were somehow manipulated into it.  Although we cannot do very much about such feelings (they come and go whether we like it or not), there is a deeper truth for which we forsake not the discipline of our faith - a truth that dances in the sacred melodies of love and freedom.

The Lenten Observance is a time of discovering the liberty of God in our freedom, and in discovering this, also tasting a new liberty.  This is a freedom that the narrow limits of this present life cannot fully contain. It orients us to a life over which sin and death have no power.

In the discipline of the Christian life, that holy exercise of our faith, God freely works through our freedom to restore our dignity and to help us discover our true identity in His eyes.  Our choices, especially those we make out of love, are the very stuff of this divine industry.  Despite our spiritual sluggishness, He is constantly making all things new in our lives and in the world with unimpeded sovereignty - and this even when sometimes we have allowed ourselves to be enslaved and traded our dignity for pottage unworthy of the children of God.  How can we respond in any other way to God's faithfulness to us than by renouncing our sins and taking up the discipline again?

Hidden though it is from our distracted gaze, the saving presence of the Risen Lord is freely directing the smallest, the most ordinary, the most humble things.  Accepting His loving Providence in the little hidden things in life is the fountain of all genuine freedom in our lives - a smile to the busy clerk at the grocery store, a kind word in exchange for a rude remark, allowing someone to inconvenience you a little so that they might know they are loved.  We need to be careful when He gently proposes and disposes, or our hearts will be pierced in such a way we may never be able to live the same again - for our freedom given in love opens up whole horizons for His freedom to work in.

This secret freedom offered us in all kinds of hidden events is the saving liberty of divine love.  It gushes from the side of the Word made flesh.  It is meant to ring through the whole of our existence, bringing every fiber of our being into its sacred harmony.  It is a canticle so beautiful that we find ourselves our old way of life mortally wounded while we are also animated by a new life totally other than this old tired world can hold down.

It is in this freedom of the Cross that the chorus of creation and the cacophony of sin are taken up in this new symphony of grace.  In the wonder of this divine melody something like the childlike freedom of real song, play and dance are unleashed into humanity: we, welcoming God's gift of Himself; He embracing us, as we give the gift of ourselves to Him and through Him to one another.

To glimpse the wonder of divine freedom at play and to have the freedom to join this dance, we must freely choose to exercise our faith.  This means deciding in each instant to fill this particular moment given to me right here and right now with all the love I can    Prayer, fasting and the works of mercy make space for this kind of freedom, this divine liberty in our humanity.   The more love we put into these holy exercises, the more we discover those hidden choices most open to the tender subtlety of His power.

The Heavenly Liturgy and the Earthly Mission

After the death of a leper king who brought great financial and technological security to Jerusalem, Isaiah receives a vision while he is worshipping in the temple.  Attitudes toward the successful but unclean king must have been mixed.  Just as political powers are inclined to do in our times, Uzziah in fact had attempted to abuse the sacred right to right worship enjoyed by the People of God inorder to expand his own political power over the lives of his subjects.  Whatever his original intentions were when he first approached God, the absolute sovereign splendor the future prophet saw over and against the passing of worldly power would help prepare for the most definitive moment of human history.

It was a vision of great and powerful spiritual creatures ministering before the overwhelming majesty of God enthroned and clothed in overflowing glory.   The awe inspiring celestial hymn he heard echoing in the temple around this scene celebrates the great truth King Uzziah himself had forgotten in his service to Judah.   Namely, true security and the most important kind of prosperity are not principally the fruit of political cleverness or skillful ingenuity.   The real source of these blessings is God Himself to whom alone right worship is owed, and though this divine rule is hidden from the proud, those who glimpse this glory are purified and sent to declare what they see.

There are countless kinds of angels of which seraphim constitute a certain rank.  The wings of an angel signify its power and the six wings of a seraph denote the greatest of all created powers.  Whatever else they are (and very little is known about them), Isaiah presents us with wonder filled, reverent, powerful and jubilant creatures who never break their ready vigilance in service to the Lord.  They are powerful and wise enough to adore the holiness of God as more holy than any holiness that can be understood.  The triple sanctus they raise in their communion of endless praise is superlative for the greatest awe and wonder.   It is a awe and wonder caught up in unimaginable love.

At the same time, they are ready and able to remedy sinful man's complaint of unworthiness.  They do not hesitate to fly to man to heal and encourage him.  They do this not by sheltering the sinful from the piercing truth that must be faced, but instead with great power they render humble humanity vulnerable to the saving Presence whom they attend.  Employing Love's sacred fire as if our frail lips were a kind of incense, Isaiah saw for Himself how they help us open our mouths so that we too might declare the Lord's praise with them before the world.

Just as in the shadow of heavenly worship Isaiah tasted the mercy of God, God's mercy baptized Peter in the shadow of Christ.  Peter did not see a celestial vision, but on the contrary he saw the Word made flesh.  He did not witness the power of mighty creatures and the overflowing raiment veiling God's glory enthroned, but instead Peter stood vulnerable and afraid before the Image of the Invisible God.  The voice that gave Peter courage was not that of seraphim, but rather he found heart only in the human speech of God Himself, "Do not be afraid."   

The courage Peter found by the shore of a lake, the whole Church finds before the table of the Lord.   At every Mass, we Christians are meant to stand together in bold vulnerability before the power of God revealed in Christ.  We stand has did Isaiah, Peter and Paul before us.  As hard as the truth of God's love is to accept and live with, we take heart because Christ commands us to.

Just before the Eucharistic prayer, the whole assembly joins the hymn of the Seraphim that once enchanted Isaiah.  We have been made able to do this not only through that hidden ministry angels, but by that of Christ Himself whose perfect offering purifies our lips.  We do not hope merely for that tiny glimpse into the shadows of divine majesty Isaiah once beheld.   Instead, we boldly dare to approach the very altar of God and partake of His mystical banquet with the hope that we might one day see Him as He is.  We even believe Christ is at work in us at this very moment so that we will be made like Him.  If before this saving mystery, Peter should complain about his unworthiness, we should not be discouraged if we must suffer displeasure over the lack of love God's holiness reveals in us.  God waits for us with eager longing to offer Him our misery just as Peter learned to do.   

Yet it is perilous if out of cowardice we deny our confession of the Son of God or remain silent about this great mercy.  The world needs the Gospel of Christ today just as much as Judah needed a word of hope in the difficult times into which Isaiah was sent.  If Isaiah, who did not fully know the pledge of future glory we now enjoy, did not fear to announce the tidings of God to a people lost in darkness, we who have shared in the cup of salvation must always be ready to give a reason for the hope we have inside.

St. John of Avila: The Obedience of Faith

It is the Year of Faith and the great mystics help us see dimensions of faith that raise our hearts above ordinary existence while also rooting us more deeply in the truth.  To this end, one of the newest doctors of the Church wrote about the virtue faith extensively.   One aspect that he describes is the need to believe what we do not understand.

In "Listen, O Daughter" chapter 38 he mentions an analogy: just as God's love demands we renounce our self-love, and just as trust in God demands we renounce our trust in ourselves, so too the obedience we owe the truth of God demands we renounce our own opinion.  This does not mean that our faith is not intelligible or that we should not try with all our might to understand the truth given to us by God, but it does mean that as Christians we do not live within the narrow confines of what we understand.  Instead, we believe, we live, we stive to be faithful on the vast horizons of all that really is and this truth is always more than we understand.

St. John of Avila is inviting us to live with our minds bent in adoration, our intellects bowed down in humility before a mystery so immense and beautiful and moving that only a light beyond all natural lights, the light that comes from God - the Light that shines in the darkness - can allow us to glimpse its inexhaustible glory - a glory which is known by love informed faith alone.

How Do We Know To Whom We Pray?

Authentic christian devotion always grounds prayer in the truth about the One to whom we pray. Many contemporary spiritual techniques and methods hold out psychological comfort and the pursuits of psychic states.  In and of themselves, comfort and enlightenment are not bad.  But if we pursue these more than the Word of the Father, if we rest in experiences rather than in faith, we are vulnerable to dehumanizing deception. The Father does not want us to compromise our integrity in our pursuit of Him and that is why He has revealed the truth to us in His Word. Through prayer rooted in this Truth, the Lord grounds us in an integrity of life more powerful than death, the only foundation firm enough to bear the weight of human existence.

In his Confessions, after observing that the Creator has fashioned humanity with the instinct or urge to praise Him, St. Augustine asks how it is we are to know God so that this human need might be met.  He realizes that we can be deluded, that we can transfer our desire for God onto other things.  If we pray to God, how do we know that we are not talking to ourselves or devoting ourselves to something else other than Him?

For St. Augustine, this is the ultimate question because it concerns our happiness.   For him, having the right answer to his question is essential because the whole purpose of our existence weighs in the balance.  Since our nature can only rest in God, if we are mistaken about who it is we are worshiping, we will not find the peace which we were meant to have. So long and so far as we are disconnected from the truth, the deepest core of our being remains frustrated and out of harmony with itself- this is, as St. Augustine experienced, a disintegrating way to live.

Could it be that some of the frustration we feel personally and that we see unfolding in society finds its roots in the fact that we are not devoting ourselves to the One True God?  We worship at other altars instead. We have not rooted our prayer in truth but in a mirage, a shadow.

There is a lot of frustration in our society and in our families today -- frustration that results from believing that attaining possessions, security, comfort, pleasure and reputation will finally allow us to be happy.  We go to Church and we do what we are suppose to, but we do not make the search for the true God the priority, the guiding passion in our lives.  We are dissipated on other pursuits - other altars demand our sacrifices.  We develop clever plans and systems to secure these good things -- and yet no matter how much we attain of them, happiness seems to elude us, like a mirage in the desert.   We are like the pilgrim Dante at the beginning of the Divine Comedy -- we think we see the way out, but the more we try, the more lost we get and the more vulnerable.

The answer St. Augustine proposes is in the words of a preacher. The Church is where the Word of the Father gives Himself to the World. The Word gives Himself in the power of the Holy Spirit. Such power moves us out of death and into a fullness of life - a new creation, a new fruitfulness.  Bridegroom gives Himself in this way because the Church is His Bride - and because the Word is coming now, the Spirit and the Bride call to us as they call to Him: Come.

A preacher speaks on behalf of the Church because of his Spirit-filled relationship with the Church. By the Holy Spirit. he does not preach his own opinions or a testimony about himself, but he witnesses to the Word so that we might know the truth about the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. Imperfect though they may be, God has chosen to makes Himself known through those who dare to preach the Gospel. Such preachers of the Word help us find the Truth about the One to whom we pray and, more than that, they help us encounter Him and know His presence. 

Entrusted with a Pearl Beyond Price

Once there was an evangelist who preached the Gospel of Christ to a group of teenagers.  After hearing how Jesus died to set us free from sin so that we might inherit eternal life, I was so slothful and spiritually asleep, I questioned him, "Is that all there is?  Is the mystery of our faith really summarized in his death, his resurrection and his coming again in glory?  I have heard this all before, but is there anything more?"

Why was my heart so cold to the Gospel of Christ?  Although I wanted to live my life for Jesus, my soul was divided.  Desires for reputation and friendship and entertainment and many other things were not fully submitted to Christ.  I had not yet learned the importance of mortification and I practiced self-denial insipidly.  So even though I believed in the gospel and even though a small part of my heart belonged to God, there were areas of my life I was holding back and I lived too dissipated a life to really question the enchanting falsehoods I entertained.  My devotion was not whole hearted.  I was afraid of what I might lose.   Unwilling to let go of things I thought were so important, my heart was not open to the riches Christ yearned to lavish on me.  

Thank God for those whose hearts are generous in sharing the Word of God.  Over the years, many beautiful souls helped me see how our indifference is melted when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable to the Lord.  At the time, the youth leader, instead of putting me in my place as I probably deserved, just looked at me and smiled.  There was a spark in his eyes which disclosed something that words cannot express, a kind of compassionate reassurance that only someone who really understands you can convey.  I wonder if this was the look Jesus gave to the rich young man?

Then Mr. Shopbell said something the gist of which moves me deeply to this day.   His exact words are lost to my memory, but what he entrusted to me is a pearl beyond price, "If you only really understood the Cross of Christ and the great gift He has given by moving you to believe in Him, you could spend a whole lifetime pondering those riches and never begin to exhaust the mystery that is there."

Thank you teachers, preachers, catechists, evangelists and parents who are faithful in telling the truth about God and spreading the message of our faith.  It is a labor of love and compassion, a real work of mercy.   Yet our hearts are starved for the truth and even the smallest drop of living water is enough to get us through the desert of falsehood we face.  The seeds you sew in secret will lead to an abundant harvest.  The Lord of the harvest will not allow your efforts to go without their reward.

Clinging to Unfathomable Mystery

Sometimes silent prayer is very purifying.  Whether in the intimacy of our bedroom or in the vulnerable solitude of the wilderness or in a candlelit oratory before the Eucharistic Presence of the Risen Lord, we struggle to attend, to cling to Him for whom we long.   Sometimes it is only by persevering in firm discipline for many years that the humble wisdom of contemplative prayer begins to be born in our hearts.

There is hope.  His mercy exceeds our misery in all its distraction.  Long after the efforts of our own cleverness are spent and our gluttony for satisfying experiences is dissipated, there is still a hungry silence under which the whole might of our soul bends in adoration, even if this is at our last life's breath.   Our own words and ideas and plans and laundry lists and agendas are not inexhaustible.  If we spend enough time in silent reflection and resist the temptation to torment ourselves with what could have been or should have been, we become aware of our own silent thirst for God.

This is not to say that silent prayer is learned by wasting time without devotion.  When there is no devotion in our heart, we should stop praying and engage in the good works the Lord has entrusted to us.  Then, as devotion returns, we can return to prayer.  In the beginning or in the midst of a hectic time of life, regularly observed but shorter periods are advised.  Eventually, the Lord invites us to spend longer periods of silence with Him -- but even though there is devotion in our hearts during prayer, prayer can still be difficult and sometimes must endure great trials.

Our devotion to the Lord in prayer might need to persevere through some discouragement but if we are determined to rely on Him, we give Him the space He needs to bless our efforts.  Our propensity to entertain ourselves is finite.  He formed us in such a way that no mere fantasy, no elaborate myth, not even carefully calculated narratives can meet the profound demands of our humanity.  Deep inside our spirits know that trying to cling to any of this is never sufficient, never enough, never worthwhile.  We are fashioned to grow in our awareness that we need something beyond what merely created psychological powers can produce.

The heart is made to rest in God.   To pray is a movement away from self-occupation and self-reliance, and into relationship with the only One who can reveal to us the truth about ourselves. When we come to delight in Him who is so other than us, when we come to see that our own existence is meant to reveal His love, this is the beginning of praise.

St. Augustine said that man is made to praise the Living God and that we cannot rest until we rest in Him. What a paradox we are to ourselves--made in the image and likeness of One who is so different from us and yet became one of us!   To desire Him, to seek Him, to encounter Him, to acknowledge Him, to cling to Him; this is the quest, the challenge, the battle, the defining moment of our humanity.  But how can we cling to Him who is unfathomable mystery?  The Word of God illumines this mystery for those who allow their hearts to thirst for Him, "His right hand holds me fast."  (Psalm 63:8)

Living Faith and Freedom to Live the Faith

Why do those who pray need to express their faith by acts of mercy, by speaking the truth, and by working for the common good?  It is because their faith is a living faith, a faith animated by friendship with God.  In such faith, God is present in a real, personal and particular way.  This faith glimpses how much God has implicated Himself in human affairs and it desires to implicate itself in divine affairs.   In such faith, the heart is open, completely vulnerable to the Lord who has made Himself vulnerable to us.  In love animated faith, His love for humanity becomes the passion of our hearts.  This heart to heart is meant to hold up each moment of our lives, but it reaches a special note of intimacy only in the silence of prayer.

Those who know this divine love yearn for the freedom to share that love with the whole world.  They are compelled to be concerned about the things that concern His Heart.   God really is concerned about humanity, about our lives together, about the most vulnerable and about the truth.   So God's friends, those who have dedicated themselves to living faith, they want to make their voices heard and work for a society that is ordered to the truth - the truth about who God is, who we are before Him, and the truth about how we are to live together in love.   This means being able to protect and promote all that is good, holy, tender, authentic and noble about sacred and frail humanity.

In the United States today this freedom is gravely threatened by those who do not understand God's love and who view living faith as an impediment to progress.   Such ignorance and misunderstanding is not fundamentally political or cultural problem, it is spiritual, a problem in the heart.  Only prayer and real dialogue - dialogue radically rooted in the truth - can change hearts.  Only the truth can set us free.

God delights in all that is genuinely human.  He delights in just laws and fairness.   He is always at work in the hearts of those with good will and in the events of life to help us enjoy what He enjoys.  He loves us this much.   Thus, as we work against unjust laws, not only here in America, but all over the world where ever people are not free to live by living faith, we must proceed confident in his love and providence.  Here, more than anything else, prayer opens up the space for Him to bless our solidarity with one another.  With divine blessing, we discover the freedom to delight in what God delights in when He gaze on us and the courage to do what needs to be done so that those we love might have this freedom too. 

Faith, Love and the Truth

Some people believe that faith implies doubt.  For them to live by faith is nothing more than the belief in a pleasant myth that helps one get through life.  Faith is to be believed when it is convenient and we never inconvenience anyone by our belief.  But to live in a fantasy like this, this is foolishness.  Unlike fantasy, the truth is inconvenient and inconveniences everyone who wants to be true.  If we do not believe in the truth, we believe in nothing.  And to believe in nothing, this is to live without anything really to live for.   This is why faith cannot be a pleasant myth to which I sometimes have recourse so that I feel better about life.   Faith either seeks the truth and cleaves to what is true with certitude, or it is utterly useless.

Faith, love and truth converge for the Christian.  If we think about our own experience in friendship, when someone discloses their love for us, we know in an instant whether or not to believe the declaration.   The authenticity of the person is evidence of the authenticity of what they have revealed.  Such a declaration, such a disclosure, such a revelation must be judged to be true or it means nothing.   There are few things in life more beautiful than to know that you can believe someone who discloses his or her heart.  When you know you can believe in someone, you do not doubt them.  You believe in them. This is what husbands and wives must do for each other.  It is what parents and children must do for each other.  To protect this exchange of love and promote it, it must not be doubted.   Instead, in all these relationships, we believe in each other, even when we fall short and disappoint.  Christain faith has this form of belief.  It is believing what God has disclosed to us about His Heart.  The difference is that our hope in God does not disappoint because God never falls short.   He goes all the way.

To believe, for the Christian, implies a claim about the love of God.  To believe implies no doubt about this love and its demands.  To believe means to be willing to fight for this love, no matter the cost.  This battle we wage not only for ourselves but also for our friends - and to be a Christian means to be ready and willing to lay down one's own life that one's friends might know the truth about the love of God.  Yes to dare to be a Christian is to pledge oneself to relentless battle in this life, but this battle of faith more than any other struggle that life throws at us is worthy of our lives and devotion.

The great saints, the martyrs of truth, men like John the Baptist, they keep before us the truth.  In the battle of faith which is a battle for the truth and for love, we like them can discover the invinible certitude that God provides.  Today more than ever in the presence circumstances of our culture and society, we who dare to call ourselves Catholic must come to believe with invincible certitude that the Christian claim and commitment to the truth is true.   It is the inheritance of the saints to be affored the opportunity to stand for truth against tyranny, to share in their invincible certitude in new ways in our times.

We have faith in the truth because we believe the claim of the One who declared God's love to an alienated world that needs love.  We have faith in the truth about who God is because the Way, the Truth and the Life died for our sake out of love and for love.  Since this is true, we cannot limit our faith to the inside of a Church building or the privacy of our homes.   Because God's love is true, we are compelled to announce it everywhere and everyplace.  Those who are oppressed by the misery of not knowing that they are loved have a right to know they are loved beyond all measure.  It is our sacred duty to announce from the rooftop, in the public square, the the marketplace of ideas that every man and woman is called by love and is awaited by love, that in this inestimable love the true meaning of our lives is to be discovered.  It is by standing on this truth that accounts for our hope and in our hope any readiness on our part to put our fortunes, reputations and lives on the line for God's love.  It is by taking our stand with this truth about God - this truth about love! - that we at last find our freedom.   Such faith does not imply doubt.  It vanquishes it.

The Simplicity of Faith - Heaven and Faith Episode 12

Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity understood something beautiful about contemplation.  As a simple gaze of love on God in faith, this kind of prayer opens us to the simplicity of love, to an interior harmony, to an inner unity with ourselves which allows us to freely give ourselves in love.  This unity, this harmony, this new life comes from God and is in God.  This is because God through the Cross imprints us, touches us, kisses us with his very own divine simplicity.  The Mystic of Dijon believed that when we spend time seeking Him in the silence of our hearts, the One who is immensely simple offers us this loving touch, this holy kiss, that we might know again the simple greatness of our humanity.

Through his Word and by his Holy Spirit, the Father unites the powers of our soul in a work of love.  Through this simple movement of love He inspires, we learn to submit our thoughts, judgments, fantasies, dreams, desires, feelings and choices to Him.  We do this by forgetting all of this and giving ourselves wholly over to the simple acts of love He entrusts to us.  Love envelops us the more we surrender to Him in this way.  This is what we are doing  when we choose to spend time in loving attentiveness to his Presence within.  It is what we are expressing when we choose to implicate ourselves in the plight of those who suffer so that they too might know this exceeding love.

The One who is Incomprehensible and totally Transcendent dwells in our innermost being because in his Omnipotence He has chosen to make Himself that accessible to us.  It was at a great price that He chose to do this -- to the point of making Himself completely vulnerable to our hostility to Him.  Behold the enigma of the Cross where misery and mercy embrace once and for all.  By this mystery, the Most High God has made the lowliness of our hearts his heaven for no other reason than He loves each one of us in a unique and unrepeatable way.

Just as the Word came into the world in the flesh to destroy death, the Victor now comes into each of our hearts in the Power of the Holy Spirit.  He, the Bridegroom of our Souls, comes to free us from the personal hell we have hid ourselves in.  He comes because He did not create us for hell.  He is eager in this quest: to rejoice with us, to delight in us, and to be enamored by us.  Such is the irresistible power of the divine love we were fashioned to share.  He also aches over the complicated pride that attempts to block His simple love.  Yet no height or depth can resist His power - for His love is stronger than death, having descended deeper and ascended higher than all else that is.

The Perfecter of our Faith is come to free us from our bondage.   He opens before us the pathway to holy freedom.  Trust in the Risen Lord is how we journey on this road.  Such trust is born in every humble prayer and grace filled decision to let go of anything and everything that keeps us from Him.  This trust, this prayer, this grace imbued choice is given by gazing on Him in faith, even as we are imprisoned by our own complications, by our own bloated sense of self.

Contemplation, time spent in silence, careful scrutiny of the Presence of God in Word and Sacrament; this kind of prayer is vital for simplicity of life.  In gazing on the One who is recognized in the Breaking of the Bread, in making oneself present to the incomprehensible gift of his Presence, in making the God who thirsts the priority of one's heart, one discovers the secret by which irrational desires for lesser things lose their power.  The heart is pure, the eye single, each effort unified, every moment of life full.

Yet this kind of prayer involves great effort, difficult trials, and all kinds of purifying hardships.  As long as we are entertaining fantasies, as long as we are driven by what seems to satisfy, as long as we are given to little power games, as long as we are tormented by righteous indignation, as long as we wallow in resentment, as long as our hearts linger on what is not for the honor and glory of God; we are not gazing on the One who gave Himself up for us.  If such failure seems certain, more certain is the victory.

It is in the very center of our failures and inadequacies where He stands victorious. Even the faintest glimmer of the Lord's radiance draws us forward, through every darkness and void.  This Word is the Light that shines in our darkness and we must vigilantly seek this divine radiance to find our freedom.  He is the substance of our hope and we possess Him by cleaving to Him in faith.  By keeping our eyes fixed on His radiance, His victory is realized again and again in each concrete, here and now circumstance, no matter how overwhelming or impossible it seems.

Only the humble, contrite gaze of faith permits the Word to share His very life with us.  Indeed, the light of faith exposes the complications in our hearts for what they truly are.  When we see such things in the light of God's love, it is easier to repent, to rethink, to let go, to accept, to forgive, to hope.

God is love.  Love is immensely simple.  Cleaving to God by faith makes us simple too. Here, the saving truth really does free us from all that is not worthy of our dignity.  Here God's power raises us up and causes all that is simply wonderful about our frail humanity to shine.

Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity  takes her younger sister Marguerite through these powerful truths in the retreat she left for her.  To continue to follow my reflections with Kris McGregor on these beautiful teachings, please click here. 

Our Great Act of Faith

Is one of the greatest spiritual diseases inflicting our age a lack of confidence in the love of God?   Confident as we are in technology, science and psychology, we are not able to bear with one another the way the generations before us were.   Our sacred promises unkept, our marriages broken, our children neglected, our dignity diminished: our faith in materialism has not given us confidence.  What has robbed us of our courage to stand fast in the midst of hardship, to believe in love in the face of the sin that afflicts us all?  

Death, sin, moral evil, physical and psychological suffering, contention even with those we most love, these signs of brokenness in our world thwart us and discourage our spirits.   We want to rebel against them or we feel overcome with despondency.   We also know that such temptations are not new, and that every man and woman who has gone before us had to face the same crossroads.  

The biggest difference between the people of faith who came before and us now is not the advancements we have made in science and technology but rather the wisdom they had and we have lost.  They knew that, whenever we try to rely on our own limited resources, such efforts are futile.  They were not so superstitious about the promises of material bliss as are we. Those people of faith also knew that God did not create us for futility.

Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity was convinced that our great act of faith was to believe in the exceeding love of God, to believe that no matter what happens to us, we remain always enveloped in His exceeding love.  This kind of faith in which we abandon ourselves into God's hands and trust in Him requires that even after we have failed miserably in our efforts to love one another, we pick ourselves up and step out again.  It demands constant efforts at examining our conscience, conversion, repentance, and difficult sacrifices for the sake of love.  This faith demands that we constantly renounce discouragement and seek the courage that only God can give through prayer. 

We never give up on one another because God never gives up on us.  He loved us to the end and He gives us what we need to love one another to the end.   What is it we need?  Him, Himself!  For God is love -and it is his love in us that makes it possible for us to live by love.  Living by this love - this alone restores what we have destroyed for it unleashes a power greater than unkept promises.   Marriages, children and dignity have been saved by the Blood of Christ - His Cross is our source of courage.

For Episode 11 on my reflections on Blessed Elizabeth's retreat Heaven in Faith with Kris McGregor and Miriam Gutierrez as the voice of the Mystic of Dijon, click here.

Prayer: A Pilgrimage through Difficult Wilderness

Is contemplation an uninteresting wilderness? Many religious who have dedicated their whole lives to prayer can speak like this, including authors like Thomas Merton. These kinds of expressions suggest those purgative experiences in prayer where our conversation with God takes on a kind of monotonous tone.  It is like that part of an adventure where nothing seems to be happening and everything looks the same.

Those who suffer this find themselves wandering, searching through a forest of unanswerable questions: Is He asleep?  Why isn't something happening when I pray?  Sometimes prayer can seem boring and can even feel like a complete waste of time. This can be dissatisfying and even discouraging. Yet this is a part of the journey of prayer and, as a character in a Tolkien story observes, not all who wander are lost.  In this real adventure, each step potentially unleashes into the world the transforming power of Divine Mercy if we allow ourselves to be guided by love.

Prayer can be extremely difficult when we do not understand or have real feeling about what God is doing. And, sometimes, the Lord can choose to keep us in the dark about his mysterious purposes for a very long time.  Only after we have grown accustomed to the vast expanses of unfamiliar horizons does the apparent lack of consolation begin to disclose its beauty to us.

We sometimes glimpse, if only for a rare and transitory moment, a greater interior freedom, a real humility, a deeper strength, and a firmer sense of purpose. A bold desire to glorify God with an unflinching resolve has taken hold. In our dryness, we know these movements of holiness in our heart did not come from ourselves - they are the fruit of Someone else's life born in us.

St. John of the Cross was so at home with this prayer, he came to see it as a sheer grace, a providential moment of pure luck. This is because abiding with God is our true home, the end of the journey we have undertaken. But He is "so totally other" than that with which we are comfortable, to find Him, He must lead us beyond what is comfortable and into a truly tedious vulnerability. It is as uninteresting as death on a Friday afternoon. Yet it is through this wilderness that we must pass if we are to live life to the full -- if we are to know the joy of possessing the One who longs to possess us in love.

Following the Star

Epiphany is a celebration of the manifestation of the Lord to the whole world.  Pope St. Leo says it is the day that Abraham saw and longed to see.  This celebration includes the mystery of a radiant star whose mysterious light draws pilgrims from afar.  It is a light that shows, discloses and reveals where those who seek the Lord might find him.  The radiant splendor of this light is the source of jubilation for those who find it:  "Behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the child was.  They were overjoyed at seeing the star" Mt 2:9 -10.

What did the Magi from the East mean when they explained, "We saw his star rising and have come to do him homage" Mt 2:2?  Were these Gentiles wise because they knew the Scriptures and prayed over its meaning?  These astrologers seem familiar with the the ancient oracle of  Balaam, "A star shall come forth from Jacob" Nm 24:17.

These Persians of the priestly caste were part of prophecy, witnesses that what was once promised was now being fulfilled, "Your light has come, the glory of the Lord shines upon you."  As they followed the star, they came to the conviction that the hope of the Gentiles rested with the newborn King of Israel, "Nations shall walk to your light and kings will come to your dawning radiance." "Bearing gold and frankincense, and proclaiming the praises of the Lord" they experienced for themselves how "The Lord will be your light forever" Isaiah 60:1, 3, 6, and 19.

The light these travelers saw was like the light St. John describes in the Apocalypse, "The city had no need for sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gave it light, and its lamp was the Lamb.  The nations will walk by its light, and to it the kings of the earth will bring their treasure" Rev. 21:23 and 24.  So important is this manifestation of glory that the Evangelist indicates this mystery at the very beginning of his Gospel, "In Him was life, and this life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it" John 1:4-5.  This saving glory and this guiding light is found by following the Lord in faith, "I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life" John 8:12.

The Star is connected to the Word disclosed in the words of Sacred Scripture.  Those who want to find this Star for themselves must search the Scriptures like the Magi searched the heavens.  As St. Maximus the Confessor explains, "A star glitters by day in the East and leads the wise men to the place where the incarnate Word lies, to who that the Word, contained in the Law and Prophets, surpasses in a mystical way knowledge derived from the senses and to lead the Gentiles to the full light of knowledge.  For surely the word of the Law and Prophets when it is understood with faith is like a star which leads those who are called by the power of grace in accordance with his decree to recognize the Word incarnate."

This search, this prayer imbued gaze on the Scriptures, this lectio divina is worth the effort.  The Light of this Word brings peace and is transforming glory for those who gaze on it.  St. Augustine encourages, "The Lord of hosts is himself the King of Glory.  He will transform us and show us his face, and we shall be saved; all our longing will be fulfilled, all our desires satisfied."

In the encounter with Christ this start establishes us in, the soul falls in love with the Lord in deeper ways and is moved to a loved filled adoration of the immensity of God and the greatness of his mercy.  The stillness and peace which brilliant radiance of the Word envelops the soul is so great, mystics like Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity are moved by this splendor to cry out in prayer, "I want to gaze on You always and remain in Your great light.  O my beloved Star, so fascinate me that I may not withdraw from Your radiance."

Guarding Interior Silence in our Vigilance

The spiritually mature long for silence - but such silence does not happen by chance.  Out of devotion to Christ, one must carefully order not only the space and time in which he lives, but also take steps to protect his conscience and struggle for purity of heart.  It is difficult work and often it feels like nothing is happening, that it is a waste of time.  Yet perservere in your devotion and attention to the Lord in this holy silence.  Silence filled with prayerful expectation is a spiritual place of encountering the Word who seeks us out. 

To enter into prayerful silence we must withdraw from exterior and interor noise.  This is not an escape -- it is the first step to dealing with reality straight up.  This is why monks go to their cells, and it is why we need to make a space in our homes that is dedicated to prayer, a place in our lives where we make prayer our priority daily.  This place must be sheltered from exterior noise, from noise like the radio, TV, and computer.  If we are not sheltered from it, such noise drowns us in distractions, and makes us forgetful of the deeper spiritual purpose that the Lord has entrusted to us.  But in addition to the noisy world around us, there is an interior racket that comes from the enchanting fantasies we entertain about things or people, fantasies promising satisfication whether physical, emotional or even spiritual.  If this cacophony goes unchecked, we find ourselves powerless against all kinds of irrational tendencies.  Unchecked, we suddenly find ourselves sitting in judgment over one another, ourselves and God -- we are such poor judges: blinded by envy, arrogance, and self-pity. 

But what happens if for part of the day I renounce a little entertainment?   What happens when I renounce impulses to try to satisfy myself with things, people or food?  What if, instead of wasting time judging my neighbor, I spent a little time in silence listening to the Lord?

The ancient monks understood the importance of keeping silence in daily life.  They understood that the physical cell in which they dwelt was only meant to be a sign of the interior silence they were meant to keep.  Such silence is vigilant, constantly on the watch for the presence of the Lord who visits our hearts.  St. Athanasius in his reflections on the Life of St. Anthony described this spiritual place as an inner mountain of hidden intimacy with God.  St. Teresa of Avila described this place of interior encounter with the Lord as a garden filled with flowers of virtue and a castle filled with innumerable rooms of personal encounter.   St. John of the Cross described it as a whole new world with exotic islands just waiting to be explored.  William of St. Thierry considered it the inner cell:

The outward cell is the house in which your soul dwells together with your body; the inner cell is your conscience and in that it is God who should dwell with your spirit, He who is more interior to you than all esle within you.  The door of the outward enclosure is a sign of the guarded door within you, so that as the bodily seneses are prevented from wandering abroad by the outward enclosure so the inner senses are kept always within their own domain.  Love your inner cell then, love your outward cell too, and give to each of them the care which belongs to it.  William of St. Thierry, The Golden Epistle, trans. Theodore Berkeley, Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications (1971), ##105-106.

Prayerful Vigilance and Advent

The coming of the Lord is often imagined as an impending catastrophe in the distant future against which one must gamble, but this is a dangerous fantasy. For those who long for the mercy of the Lord, for those oppressed, for those persecuted, for those rejected, for those despised, for those abandoned, for those who hunger, for those who thirst, for the poor, for the meek and lowly; for all such as these the Day of the Lord will not be a catastrophe but if they cleave to Him in faith, this day will be a eucatastrophe -- a sudden happy ending; unimaginable, unexpected, uncalculable; a victory, a triumph in which every tear is wiped dry and every sorrow consoled, in which at last the personal story entrusted to each of them will be enveloped in joy.

The brief span of this present life is hurtling towards eternity, accelerating at an exponential rate with every instant of our lives. In the twinkling of an eye, when all seems most bleak, when the banality of evil seems to be snuffing out the last light of goodness, in the face of the total antithesis of all that God has promised, in the midst of a world gone crazy with insobriety and anxiety, when it would seem that for which we have most hoped was hoped for in vain -- it is in this instant of love when the Lord will come. It is humanity's great test and it is meant to be the finest hour for each one of us, the moment when the secret meaning of our lives is revealed.
Whether it is the end of time, or the end of our lives, or the countless opportunities we have to die to ourselves and live for Christ each day: this is the trial in which we repay love for love, when we cleave to love because of Him who was crucified by love, when we believe in mercy and practice it because of the mercy we have received. In this trial, the truth about who we really are is waiting to be revealed – for we are so fashioned that unless we are able to give the gift of ourselves in love the way God has entrusted the gift of Himself to us, we never fully become what we are predestined in Christ to be: the praise of God’s glory. And so, we must be vigilantly prayerful that we might recognize the hour of the Lord’s coming and persevere in the truth when the truth is most needed. Anyone who embraces this vigilance constantly discovers foretastes of the eucatastrophe that awaits those whom Christ calls “good and faithful servants.”

The Lord is Coming - Take Him to your Heart

"Take Him to your heart... keep Him in you as in a sanctuary... live with Him in intimacy"  This was advice offered to a new religious sister just beginning her life as a nun.  The beauty of this message only fully discloses itself when we consider the author.   Dictated while racked in pain, coming in and out of delirium, enduring all kinds of physical, psychological and spiritual hardships, wrestling with even despair itself, these words are her great testament to her hope in Christ, a hope to which she cleaved in the face of everything.  In the final weeks of her life, she had become a fiery icon of holiness which gave warmth and enlightenment not just to her community but to everyone who desired to grow in prayer.   This nun was Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity, the Mystic of Dijon.

Taking Christ to heart is necessary if one is to be faithful in one's service to God.  Blessed Elisabeth also exhorted the new sister "to raise" herself up in strength and "to surrender" her whole being to the Lord.  The total trust in the Lord haunts these words.  We must use our strength to raise ourselves up and not allow ourselves to be bogged down by the anxieties and concerns of this life.  Once raised up, we must surrender not just for a moment and not just what is comfortable, but everything to God.   Such raising up and surrender is impossible without God - but the Lord himself is our hope.  Something in these words apply to every life, no matter how busy or active or frantic.  Because to live the Christian life well in whatever our calling we must welcome Jesus into our hearts all the time and never lose sight of Him.  This is a matter of interior discipline where we continually turn our thoughts back to the Lord, keeping them all under the "exceedingly great" love of God, "until He consumes you both night and day"  (P123, 22 Oct 1906).

To take the Lord to our hearts is to raise up, to surrender and to welcome with all our might the One who comes in love, the One who is Love.  If we allow our vision to be raised up by faith, if we allow Him to hold our every thought captive in faith, we begin to see that He constantly comes to us in ever new ways and we glimpse how much He yearns to be greeted in love.  Recollection in the silent adoration of our faith holds us in prayerful attentiveness to this divine visitation, this divine invasion of inexhaustible love flooding into our space and time.  Such loving vigilance, with its attention raised above the work-a-day world and the claims of bliss echoing in the merely subjectively satisfying, allows Him to begin a new work in our lives.  If we are faithful to this, the love of the Lord can consume our whole being, making us into fiery icons of his love.

Holiness is a gift which must be welcomed and fully lived out.  It is not the fruit of passivity to the demands of love or of escape from the responsibilities entrusted to us in the brief span of life we have been granted in this world.  Sanctity is not attainable by method or technique or any other attempt manipulate God or else raise oneself to His level.  It is not the achievement of a lifetime - but rather an obedience unto death.  Because the gift of holiness consists in a participation in God's life, it is greater than our natural life and makes a claim on our whole being.  But God would never ask so much if He were not going to supply all that we need for such a great undertaking.  This is why He entrusts to us his very self - And He comes in the power of the Holy Spirit pulsating, communicating, enveloping, inundating us the "exceedingly great" love revealed on the Cross.  We find new courage to take Him to our hearts because He takes us to His heart even more.