The Abbot’s Notebook for January 24, 2018
My sisters and brothers in Christ,
Blessings to you! Finally we had our first real snow of this winter last Sunday. It was only three or four inches, but it was snow. We have had some sprinkles late last year and that was about it. This snow covered the ground and was beautiful and brought much delight to brothers who had never seen snow.
Think of me in the mornings and late at night. I usually walk three times a day and once in a while I get a fourth walk in. On Sunday morning it was a wild and windy walk with snow swirling around me and the dogs taking delight in it all. The trees were spectacular. By the midday walk, the sun was trying to come through but was eventually conquered by the clouds again.
Again I want to return to the theme of God’s love for us. Becoming aware that we are loved by God is what all of Scripture is about. So often we can be distracted in the Scriptures by the strong language, by the imagines of anger, by the killings a destruction of others. We get distracted because Scripture is not a textbook and is a revelation of God’s love but revealed in humans and with human words and images. Somehow all the images get in our way of seeing the great image of God’s love and mercy, which is given to us over and over and over in the Scriptures and finally most powerfully in Jesus Christ.
How different our lives are when we wake in the morning and are aware immediately: “God loves me just as I am!” How differently we can relate to others when our relationships come from the awareness of God’s love for me and for the other. How differently we can treat others when we are aware that they are completely loved by God just as they are—even when they may be terribly irritating to me!
All of our prayer becomes a response to the love of God. All of the things we do each day become forms of expressing our aware of His love for us. All of our thoughts, no matter how good or bad they are, can be shared with the God who loves us. When we find that we have done something that we ourselves don’t like, when we are tempted to reject ourselves or others, when we are on the verge of anger or over that verge—always God is there and loving us just as we are.
Slowly this awareness of God’s love for us can pull us away from all that keeps us away from the Lord. This response to God’s love allows God’s healing to be present within us and to change our very way of being. We recognize that we don’t have to be perfect in any way for God to love us—but we are invited to respond to God’s love and that response begins to change us from the inside out. No longer do we do things because we want to gain God’s love. Instead we do things because we know that God loves us.
In my childhood, in spite of coming from a family with incredibly and awful problems, and in spite of my parents not being very demonstrative when I was young, I always knew that my parents loved me. That made a huge difference in my life. It was something rock solid on which I could always rely.
So too the love of God must be that way in our lives: rock solid! We have to know without any doubt that God loves us and is always with us and is always seeking ways to draw us more deeply into the relationship with Him. We don’t have to do things to try to appease God nor do we have to find ways so that God will not be angry with us. Rather, once we know that His love is always there, we can begin to rejoice in that love and respond to it without fear.
To others who live with us, our lives may seem the same and that does not matter. What matters is that within us we are living within the great mystery of Salvation and Redemption. We can begin to speak with this God who loves us. We may call Him our Father. Or we may speak with His Son, our Lord and Brother. Or we might be speaking with the Holy Spirit, who comes to convince us of God’s presence and who gives us courage to speak of our own faith to others. The people who live with us may see no changes at all in us and that does not matter. What matters is that we begin to have a deep confidence in God’s presence and God’s love for us and we spend more time speaking with Him and aware of His presence.
What becomes really important in life is simply the relationship with the living God and all else is lived as an aspect of that relationship. We come to trust the Lord so very much that making mistakes in our lives or doing things that are not what we might have wanted to have done no longer are a huge concern for us. They are simply part of the living reality of our lives focused in the Lord.
When I was a young man studying philosophy I remember the statement of Soren Kierkegaard: purity of heart is to will one thing. That sort of sums up the spiritual life: willing one thing! The one thing is Jesus Christ. This relationship becomes all that is important. For sure, we still do the other things that we must do in our lives. We don’t stop eating and we don’t stop sleeping and we don’t stop working and we don’t stop living with others. But everything is now within the relationship with Jesus Christ and not us trying to put Jesus Christ into the other relationships.
And just to be moving in this direction does not keep us from all sin and all mistakes and all the brokenness of our lives. But the sin and the mistakes and the brokenness simply have lost their meaning because now all is Christ and Christ is all.
So I get up every day the very same person, filled with my own personal history and my own brokenness and my long list of mistakes and sins from my past. I live with others and can still be cranky and obnoxious. I can still find myself judging others and wishing that I were better and hoping that others don’t see all my mistakes and my unworthiness. From all outward appearances, I have not changed at all. And yet within, I am completely changed and find the meaning and the heart of my life in the Lord Jesus. Nothing has changed and yet all has changed.
As always I continue to pray for you and to offer the Holy Mass once a week for you and for your needs and intentions. Again I ask your prayers for me and for the sisters and brothers of all of our communities. I send you my love and prayers.
Your brother in the Lord,
Abbot Philip
