The Word Became Flesh
April 7, 2009
The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life – only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. John 10:17-18
Jesus Christ moved purposefully toward his own very human death when he rode into Jerusalem. Such love of the humble King is unfathomable, for I am like one who spits on his face daily (Matt. 26:67). And yet his death… it is saving me daily. How can I not, then, be for his glory?
“Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!” John 12:27
The Exact Representation
April 6, 2009
Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”
John 14
Withholding Nothing
April 5, 2009
Excerpt from Clowning In Rome, Henri Nouwen:
We want to be men and women who love and worship God, but we also want to protect a little corner of our inner lives for ourselves. We cling to a protected space where we might sometimes hide out with our own secret thoughts, our dreams and fantasies, and our play with our own mental fabrications. When we begin to think about living and thinking always in God’s loving presence we experience the immediate temptation to select carefully the thoughts that we bring into our conversations with God and the ones we reserve for our own private time.
What makes us so frightened and stingy? Maybe we wonder if God can handle all that goes on in our minds and hearts. Is God up to accepting our hateful thoughts, our cruel fantasies and our shameful dreams? Can our compassionate Brother handle our primitive images, our inflated illusions, and our exotic mental castles? Or do we want to hold onto our own pleasurable imaginings and stimulating reveries, afraid that in showing them to our Lord, we may have to give them up? We shuffle forward and backward, desiring intimate communion and seduced to selfish introspection. Fear mixes with our yearnings and greed with our generosity, and we gradually become aware of how much those secret meanderings are most in need of Love’s healing touch.
…By refusing to share these thoughts, we limit our own healing, erecting little altars to the mental images we are withholding from the divine conversation.”
It’s You, Not Me
April 4, 2009
Excerpt from Clowning In Rome, Henri Nouwen:
Prayer asks us to break out of our monologue with ourselves and to imitate Jesus by turning our lives into an unceasing conversation with the One we call God.
Prayer, therefore, is not introspection. Introspection means to look inward, to enter into the complex network of our mental processes in search of some inner logic or some elucidating connections. Introspection results from the desire to know ourselves better and to become more familiar with our own interiority. Although introspection has a positive role in our though processes, there is a danger that it may entangle us in a labyrinth of our own ideas, feelings, and emotions and lead us to an increasing self-preoccupation. Introspection often causes paralyzing worries or unproductive self-gratification. Introspection has the potential to create moodiness, and this moodiness is a very widespread phenomenon in our society. It betrays our great concern with ourselves and our undue sensitivity to all our thoughts and feelings. It leads us to experience life as a constant fluctuation between “feeling high” and “feeling low,” between “good days” and “bad days,” and thus becomes a form of narcissism.
Prayer is not introspection. It is not a scrupulous inward-looking analysis of our own thoughts and feelings but it is an attentiveness to the Presence of Love personified inviting us to an encounter.”
