LOVE’S GREATEST GIFT

(Sent to Lay Cistercians of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery (Trappist). Conyers, Ga. http://www.trappist.net

May the Grace and Peace of Our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.

Our meeting on Tuesday is about our Lay Cistercian theme: Gratitude, but with a slight twist. I am sharing with you some ideas that we may discuss on Tuesday at our prayer meeting/reflection on gratitude.

This morning at 1:10 a.m., my Lectio Divina swept me into the thinking that led to “awareness” as a sub-topic. This is such an important dimension of “capacitas dei,” that I had to write some of what I remembered of what the Holy Spirit tried to present to this old noggin.

My Lectio began with an unlikely YouTube video that I was watching at 1:10 a.m. This video was called CANCELLED and highlighted all the properties around the world that have just been abandoned by their owners because of financial difficulties. It was a Four Seasons resort on Bali, a paradise if there ever was one. It was all grown up with weeds and trees and, after a fire or two, was just the shell of concrete walls. Nature had reclaimed it in a remarkably short time. I was shocked that Four Seasons, the ultimate in luxury and sophistication, would have been scuttled and abandoned. It said that the government, investors, and potential owners, such as Simon Cowell and Andrew Lloyd Webber owned some land there. It never got off the ground because of all the confusion of tongues (aka The Tower of Babel).

When I saw the confusion of humans and the desolation of Four Seasons, for some reason I thought about original sin (being the theoretical theorist that I am). 

At this season of pruning our senses of false foliage, it made sense to me that Four Seasons was like the condition of original sin into which we are all thrust at our birth. Like the briar bush of Br’er Fox, what is nature will automatically become what it is naturally intended to be. To me, I found a great analogy for my life and why I have had to struggle every day to overcome the brush and trees that grow up if I don’t prune them back. Original sin, the consequence of choice is the price each of us pays for the sin of Adam. At this time of the Incarnation, I think that Christ paid the price that allowed us to be free to prune back the bushes and weeds that inevitably take over any place that we don’t actively work to clear. It is a daily fight, but one where Christ made us aware of what is going on and how we should not be hostage to sin but free to keep cutting the grass of our wounded humanity and, with the help of the Panis Angelicus and making all things new through awareness of who we are in the sight of God, slosh our way through Christ using His way, His Truth, and so His Life to reach the destiny originally intended in the Garden before the Fall.

Baptism allows me to take this awareness to the next level of my evolution, being an adopted son or daughter of the Father. It is still a rough way to go but just because my road is rocky, doesn’t mean I am on the wrong path. My Lay Cistercian Way, unique to me as it is to every Lay Cistercian, means I seek God every day as I am and as God presents to me the opportunity to glorify the Father, through, with, and in Christ with the energy of the Holy Spirit. Awareness of these dynamics in my life means I am not as prone to the seduction of my human characteristics toward unauthentic purposes. Christ became one of us by an act of kenosis (abandonment) that allowed humans to be aware (according to their capacitas dei) of reality that is the only way to both ask and get answers to three lessons each human must grapple with to become what nature intended us–that next step in our evolution. They are:

• What does it mean to be a human being at the next level of evolution? (Father)
• What is the meaning of love and how does that lift me up with Christ to fulfill my humanity to what it should have been before the Fall? (Son)
• What does it mean to be present to absolute truth absolutely and how does just being present to divine energy energize my spirit (according to my capacitas dei)?

Growing ever deeper in Christ Jesus each day, awareness of my surroundings informs and inhabits who I am. Even though each day is new, I am not, thanks to just being in the presence of Christ through the Holy Spirit, my second advocate. I only have to do one thing and that is to be aware of what is happening. I can’t do that without sitting next to Jesus on the Couch of the upper room of my inner self and just waiting, but with a smile in my heart as I “listen to God with the ear of my heart.”

My Christmas and everyday gift to you is to hope that you are aware of the supreme joy and fulfillment of your humanity through abandoning all only to realize that you have gained everything plus the art of contemplative practice.

At this time of stillness, solitude, and silence (at least in our hearts) may we have the peace of Christ there to combat the forces that militate against our being fully human. The peace of Christ is not the absence of conflict or pain, but the presence of Love. This is the Incarnation and Resurrection, Ascension and Eternal Fulfillment of our humanity…Forever.

A greater gift than this no one can give than to give their life for another. 

Michael