The Center for contemplative practice
A Lay Cistercian Looks at Spiritual Reality
FIVE contemplative THOUGHTS IN SEARCH OF CLOSURE
You might have some different ideas about this. Five of my thoughts that I still romance after all these years follow. I guess I never will ultimately reach the depth of their significance in my seeking God in my daily living. “That in all things, God be glorified.” –St. Benedict
- EVERYTHING HAS A BEGINNING AND AN END: Everything in the physical universe (including you, me, all living things, matter, energy, and time) has a beginning and an end. We have a beginning and an end in the mental universe (only humans live here) (70 or 80 years, if we are strong). In the spiritual universe, we enter Baptism, where Christ chooses us to be adopted sons or daughters; we have a beginning (Baptism) and an end (Heaven). Look at the URL of Ozymandius: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4vk0TLrpcY.
- WE CANNOT KNOW GOD OR STAND IN THE PRESENCE OF GOD WITHOUT FRYING OUR NEURONS: Human nature and divine nature are two completely separate beings. That is why Philippians 2:5-12 is so essential in my spiritual thinking. When I first realized that I could not contain, much less understand the mysteries of Faith as God understands them (Baptism of Adoption, Eucharist, and why trust sinful sons and daughters of Adam and Eve with the keys of the kingdom of heaven, to name a few), I just slightly began to comprehend the statement of St. Thomas Aquinas that everything he wrote about God to this point was so much straw, compared to who God really is. We don’t access God by knowledge alone but by Faith, and even that comes to us through the Holy Spirit. It is true, we can somewhat know God as looking through a frosty glass but never face to face. Christ alone is our mediator with the Father, who intercedes on our behalf to ask for mercy, the one who shares His very self (human and divine nature) with sinful people like ourselves.
- I WORRY ONLY ABOUT TRYING EACH DAY TO SEEK GOD AS I AM AND WHERE I AM: Do you remember the passage in the Scriptures where Jesus is trying to focus our thoughts on how to love others as He loves us? I love to look for patterns in reality, such as how all things fit together in the Old and New Testaments. One such pattern resulting from my attempting Lectio Divina each day is that of worry. I worry less about things I consider non-essential to my purpose (Deuteronomy 6:5 and Matthew 22:36). Because I try to seek God every day as I am and where I am, I don’t worry about the external situations I find myself in, such as COVID 19. At 79.10 years old, I just age in place and take each day as a lifetime. Read the verses below about worry.
| Do Not Worry25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink,[j] or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?[k] 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32 For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But strive first for the kingdom of God[l] and his[m] righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.34 “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today. |
4. EUCHARIST IS CHRIST’S OWN BODY AND BLOOD GIVEN FOR THE FORGIVENESS OF OUR SINS. Perhaps the most conflicting and misunderstood of Christ’s commands is to believe that He exists under the appearance of bread and wine. It doesn’t fit today’s self-righteous relativism that glories in the worst part of our human nature, sin. If you really believe that Christ is present, body and blood, soul and divinity, why would you not want to spend your time in this precious gift of self, given just for you? I have dual citizenship that struggles to compete for my free will. The choice is the only aspect of each individual human that God does not have. The Blessed Mother was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, which is why she could give her YES. Faith is that gift from God that enables each of us who are Baptized to become adopted sons and daughters of the Father. The problem is that there is a hidden but natural pull between belief and unbelief in my mind and heart. St. Thomas Aquinas says: “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.” I have accepted that my struggle is part of the love which I must endure to say Jesus is Lord. I do not have the power by myself to overcome the seductions that the Lord of Darkness beckons me to embrace. My struggle is a prayer to Christ to help me move from my false self to my true self. Each day, I must begin the struggle again, hoping that I will win the battle that day.
Last year, I just realized what the saying “The Church is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic” means. 5, THE CHURCH IS HOLY, BUT THE TEMPORAL LIVING OUT OF THAT HOLINESS IS MADE BY SINFUL PERSONS WHO CAN MAKE POOR CHOICES, AND THERE ARE CONSEQUENCES TO THOSE CHOICES. This occurred to me in a Lectio Divina when I looked at the contradiction between good and evil in Genesis 2-3. First, what God made is good. The butterflies, the fish in the seas, the clouds in the sky, and the animals, including humans. All have a good nature. Humans have something no other species has, the ability to reason and know and the freedom to choose. The problem comes not from the ability to choose but from what we choose and its intended and unintended consequences. Christ assumed our human nature to teach us how to love, which is the ultimate purpose of being human. Although St. Paul cleverly writes that “He who knew no sin became sin for us, Christ did not sin.”
The Ministry of Reconciliation.
11* Therefore, since we know the fear of the Lord, we try to persuade others; but we are clearly apparent to God, and I hope we are also apparent to your consciousness.g
12We are not commending ourselves to you again but giving you an opportunity to boast of us, so that you may have something to say to those who boast of external appearance rather than of the heart.h
13For if we are out of our minds,* it is for God; if we are rational, it is for you.
14* For the love of Christ impels us, once we have come to the conviction that one died for all; therefore, all have died.i
15He indeed died for all, so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.j
16Consequently,* from now on we regard no one according to the flesh; even if we once knew Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer.
17k So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.
18* And all this is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and given us the ministry of reconciliation,
19namely, God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.l
20So we are ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.m
21* For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin,n so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/2corinthians/5
Each individual who ever lived (except Christ and his mother, Mary) was born into sin. This is another way of saying that we have problems choosing what is good or bad. The Church is holy, but those in the Church Militant (left on earth to live out our lives until we die) must struggle against Satan to win the battle of what is good or evil. These days, relativism and erroneous doctrines compete for our belief. Each day, each person signed with the cross on their forehead at Baptism must choose. Sometimes we get it wrong, but Christ gives us a way to make all things new, over and over.
The struggle is important, not the potholes we step in so frequently.
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