Jesus - Our Access to God

Jesus is access to the Father, the bridge to heaven, the road to hope.  Faith in Him, this is to believe that He is fully God and fully man, that he died for our sins and is risen from the dead, that He is present to each one of us personally even when He seems completely absent, that He called us all to be one in Him even in the face of our divisions.  Most of all, faith in Jesus is to let his longing capture our hearts.  For He longs for us.  This is what is revealed on the Cross.  This is why the only way to Him is the Cross.  We go to the Cross by faith, faith which renounces sin, endures trial, and is tested: in prayer, in work, in service to God, in loving others, in suffering sickness, in rejection, in persecution, in the face of death.  Whenever we go to the Cross, his longing is produced in us by the purifying fire of his Holy Spirit - and when we surrender to this loving action, there is nothing He cannot achieve in our lives.  Bound to Him, our cross with His, He raises us to the Father.

Francis Xavier Nguyen Thuan - Road to Hope

Cardinal Thuan was just declared venerable on October 22. A priest of Vietnam, he was into police custody in 1975 only months after being named the coadjutor archbishop in Saigon. Thirteen years later, nine of those in solitary confinement, he was released from prison into house arrest and then expelled from his native land in 1991. He served the Church in Rome until his death in 2002. While in prison, anxious for his flock, he found a way to sneak messages to those entrusted to his care. Many of them are challenging:


"Is your life merely a continuous chain of events with time for sleeping, for rising, for eating, for study, for work, for relaxation, watching television, or reading newspapers? If there is not unifying element to your life, it will be meaningless. That element is the love of God. With it your life will change and all your actions will testify to God's presence within you."

And even more poignant:

"If you do not advance along the Road to Hope or aim at holiness, you belong to neither the younger nor the older generation, but to the generation of the dead. How wonderful and attractive it would be if, in this age of weakness, there should arise a generation of saints! God desires this, and you should desire it for your own life."

The Road to Hope, Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2001. p. 152-153

A Sacrifice to God - Guigo the Carthusian and St. Paul

Almost a thousand years ago, a group of men built a monastery above Grenoble in the Carthusian Mountains and dedicated themselves to following the Lord in the tradition of the early desert fathers of Egypt.   In that dark and cold wilderness, they wanted to live their lives as an offering to the Lord.  They understood that the one who gives his life to God is never outdone in generosity.  The Lord fills such a person with his own life, a life offered for the Glory of the Father and the Salvation of the World. This view of life is not original to the Carthusians.  It is a fundamental truth in all Christian spirituality.   It is why St. Paul wrote the Galatians that it is no longer he who lives, but Christ who lives in him.  The Carthusians knew this same truth, and because of their intimacy with Christ, even though they had very little interaction with the rest of society, they were credited with bringing the warmth and light of the East to France.

For Christians, life is a precious gift, one that should be treasured.  We show how grateful we are for the gift of life when we live it to the full.  And, the paradoxical secret of living life to the full is to offer it as a sacrifice of love.  Both the Apostle and the Hermit were convinced that faith in Christ Jesus makes such a sacrifice possible.


"Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, your spiritual worship."
Romans 12:1

"As you are farseeing, careful, learned and most acute, take care to save the little bit of life that remains still unconsumed, snatch it from the world, light under it the fire of love to burn it up as an evening sacrifice to God.  Delay not, but be like Christ both priest and victim, in an odor of sweetness to God and to men."
Guigo the Carthusian to the servants of the Cross (trans. Thomas Merton, Charterhouse of the Transfiguration, 2006)

Karol Wojtyla - the Man of Will

"Love and move inwards, discover your will."   Through poetry, John Paul II explores three kinds of men - the emotional, the intellectual and the volitional.   He describes the limitations of emotions and thought when it comes to really living life.  Can the man of emotion, so caught up in the enthusiasm of love, embrace the distance between hearts that must be entered into with reverence?  Can the man who lives out of his head really appreciate the charm, variety and adventure of life?   When it comes to following the Lord, sometimes we think too much.  Sometimes we must act even when we feel nothing.  Against unbridled emotions and cold thought, he holds up the one who lives by making the right choice.  Such a person is free to live by love.  The end of this meditation says a lot about his own character and the secret of his faithfulness to the Lord:

Man of Will

Colourless moment of will yet heavy as piston's drive,
or sharp as a whip,
a moment that, on the whole,
encroaches on nobody --
or only on me.
It doesn't ripen like fruit, out of feeling,
or emerge from thought,
it just shortens the road.
When it comes I must lift it up
and this I do, on the whole.

No place for heart and thought,
only the moment exploding
in me, the cross.

A poem by John Paul II in his Collected Poems translated by Jerzy Peterkiewcz (Random House, 1979, 1982) p. 87.

The Beginning of Christian Prayer

Jesus’ last cry from the Cross is the beginning of Christian prayer. How can we ignore the connection between what St. Paul says is the Holy Spirit groaning in us and this wordless cry of the Word made flesh? The Holy Spirit, the very Soul of our souls, pours out Christ’s prayer in us, especially in those moments when the Lord seems furthest away, when the very meaning of life seems lost. Christ cries out in us in our broken poverty, suffering this with us so that even the most severely sick, those right at death’s door, can find Him. When the cry of our hearts is taken up by the cry of his heart – this is prayer. St. Therese of Lisieux explains that this is a cry of recognition and love, a cry that embraces not only joy but every trial, even the most crushing defeats. For in this cry of faith, Christ is recognized, his love known, his joy tasted, and the cup of his suffering shared. 


The prayer of those who believe in Jesus is not their own - by a wholly simple movement of love they participate in the deepest yearning of the Lord's own heart.  That is why cultivating silence, self-possession and interior recollection are all so important.  Only faith guided by love can enter deep into the heart of the Lord - can find the heart of the Lord the depths of one's own poverty.  And He discloses the most beautiful truths to those who persevere in seeking Him.  They come to rest in knowing Him and in knowing all things in Him.  But what strange rest - for those who taste it find themselves caught up in the superactivity of divine love!  This kind of rest constantly breaks forth in new acts of compassion and concern.  This rest bursts forth with Jesus's thrill in the goodness of the Father.   This rest plunges into the very heart-ache of Christ for those who will not hear his voice.  Words fail.  This is why the great doctors of prayer describe it as a rain storm, a wild fire, a gentle breeze, blairing trumpets, delicate melodies, a loving light, fire in the night, eternity begun and still in progress.

For those who open their hearts to this kind of prayer, the movements of His heart are the gravitational force for their whole existence - in Christian prayer, the heart moves into the orbit of the One crucified by love.  Every time one dies to oneself, every small act of obedience to the Lords voice, joins us to the mystery of crucified love - the only place where human poverty and God's mercy can embrace.  Because of the Cross, Christians can finally pray in a communion of real friendship with the living God. The disciple of Christ's prayer discovers in this friendship he is totally understood and begins to understand, he is exceedingly loved and so begins to learn to love in return.