it's been awhile! per usual, i am going to be exceedingly productive writing blogs this evening, for precisely the reason that i should be preparing for a presentation and midterm next week. ah well, maybe the two can intertwine a bit (one of the many glorious blessings of being a religious studies major).
so today's the feast day of one of the coolest saints in church history (seriously) - st. francis of assisi. so his prayer was running through my head today (in a similar fashion to which it's been running through my life for the past 21 years or so)... and even if you know it, i'll retype it because i think it's kind of impossible to pray this prayer too often. read it slowly; let it sink in.
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace
where there is hatred, let me sow love
where there is injury, pardon
where there is doubt, faith,
where there is despair, hope
where there is darkness, light,
and where there is sadness, joy
grant that i may not so much seek
to be consoled, as to console
to be understood, as to understand,
to be loved, as to love
for it is in giving that we receive
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal Life.
how hard
it is to live this out! to love, believe, forgive, hope, shine, be joyful, console, understand, and give, to die to everything we want for ourselves every single day - i know i've been doing pretty much the opposite of that for quite a while now - even while hearing the prayer run through my head i could feel myself protesting - why should i be the one to be strong? especially when, as is inevitable to happen if you love as uncompromisingly as Christ's life calls us to, the same people you are trying to love are the ones who hate you for trying to be strong or, worse, don't even notice? maybe they should be taught a lesson, i feel myself say. what's the point of excessive love? i'll withdraw, then they'll see, then they'll be sorry! (note to reader: they won't be sorry - just disillusioned. imagine if Christ decided on Holy Thursday to do the same!! how different life would be.)there's a line somewhere in the Bible that says that when someone asks you to carry their pack for a mile, carry it for two, and by your excess in love you will hurt them - teach them a lesson, if you will. someone in one of my seminars pointed out that this is more like passive aggression, not love. but what is love? isn't it nothing more than moving another soul closer to God? didn't Christ look his torturers in the eye and openly accept it? didn't He know that one of the soldiers would cry out as He died, "surely this was the Son of God!"? what could have moved the soldier to cry out those words except for Christ's obedience, excessive acceptance of suffering with love? perhaps part of Christ's love was the
knowledge that the guilt stirred up in the soldier's heart would lead to his conversion. was that passive aggression, or just a part of a fuller God-oriented love?it's difficult to accept this teaching - every fiber of myself that doesn't love God protests against it - because it's a call to the cross. it's a call to death. and it's a call to trust, that the prayer of st. francis speaks the truth - that we will be pardoned, we will receive, and we will be resurrected.
the readings today were beautiful - the first was how Eve was taken from Adam's side, because "it is not good for man to be alone," the second reading was that Christ joins us to the Divine and the Gospel was that man cannot separate what God has joined [now that Christ is with us]. it finishes with a blessing of children. very Theology of the Body - man and woman complete each other, but are united to God through Christ in the Sacrament of Marriage, and can now never be separated... but Christ's unification itself is defined by suffering love. whew. a lot for meditation, much more than i can fit in here - and very good for my romantically-dispositioned self. here, at least, is the second reading, from Hebrews - so beautiful.
"Brothers and sisters:
He "for a little while" was made "lower than the angels, "
that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. "
[though we all die, we will never, i believe, be as alone, as isolated, as Christ in the instant before His death, in the instant before He conquered death - "Daddy, why have you abandoned me?" - we do not taste death like He did, because He conquered it, and death and Resurrection are now the same for those who consecrate themselves to God)]
"For it was fitting that he,
for whom and through whom all things exist,
in bringing many children to glory,
should make the leader to their salvation perfect through suffering.
He who consecrates and those who are being consecrated
all have one origin.
Therefore, he is not ashamed to call them “brothers.” "
beyond words. suffering, love, equality with God, and in the context of the Sacrament of Marriage, all of these things as the living Doorway to the unification of man and woman in Christ, which no man can separate, souls joined forever, through the kind of love St. Francis writes about, only possible if given without reserve, without bitterness, without selfishness or a sense of being wronged - a senseless passionate love for everything that lives, the kind of senselessness that makes one end up nailed to a tree - and the kind of senselessness that, in the end, makes sense so perfectly that only Satan is baffled, the kind of sense that triumphs over death and opens the door to Eternity through the suffering, throbbing heart of love of Jesus Christ.
Amen!!
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