This collection of brief reflections is dedicated to the Holy Trinity, my greatest love and dearest friend. The ideas build, point upon point, to hopefully show how the Trinity, who is Love, permeates every facet of life. Praise (1-11), Estrangement (12-26), Revelations (27-46), Love: Definitions (47-56), Processes (57-77), Temple-Bodies (78-89), Liturgical (90-94), Incarnate (95-100).
“It seems to me that I have found my heaven on earth, because my heaven is you, my God, and you are in my soul. You in me, and I in you – may this be my motto.” ~ St. Elizabeth of the Trinity
St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, pray for us!
PRAISE
Holy Trinity, the great surprise of my life is that I was created to love You.
All of my loves guide me to You and find their origin and fulfillment in You.
You created everything for the purpose of revealing Yourself to us.
I first encountered You in a particular way in the heartbeat of music, knowing that something-- --it turned out to be Someone!--extraordinary was present to me in it.
The wonder of music is ultimately indescribable, as You are indescribable. After all that my mind can understand, I can only know You with my heart.
Help me to always be humble before You, and never force You to be who I think You are or should be.
May the wonder of You permeate my thinking and desiring so that I live without limits.
I can not know everything about You, and I don't need to. I only need to move towards wherever You are, and away from wherever You are not.
If I listen closely, I can hear Your voice. There is no other voice like it in my heart.
Every circumstance is an occasion of Your self-revelation. Through the good, bad, and in between, You are always speaking to me.
All of my thinking finds its purpose in knowing You and what You have made, which reveals You.
ESTRANGEMENT
Mysteriously, I wanted to know You before I knew who You were.
You chose me first and patiently accompanied me through life until I was ready to encounter You.
Like Eve shorn of original holiness in the garden, I intuited that I was “outside” of something. The insecurities, self-loathing, and alienation I experienced in my youth were caused by our separation. My awareness of not understanding the big picture and living in opposition to it, prevented me from living with purpose and confidence.
Even though society told me that I was a good person, I knew I wasn't. I knew that I lived for my own success and comfort.
I was miserable. Deep down, I wanted to be included. You have opened the door, and I have come in out of the cold. Your Heart heals my heart. The ice melts, the walls crumble, and the masks fall off.
My heart has longed for the warmth of your presence all of my life. You light up the room for me.
Now that You and I have made peace, I can make peace with others because Your love sets me free to love myself as I am and to love others as they are. You have taught me that I am enough just as I am because only You are everything. You have taught me that others are enough just as they are because only You are everything.
In the depths of my hardwiring, I am made to live in sync with Your purposes, which is to say: I desire for everything I do to be loving, constructive, and exactly what is needed. Yet, I am so flawed and small in the vast scheme of things. The grandeur of it all crushes me unless You guide me one baby step at a time.
Until I understood that your grace goes before me and follows me, I was handicapped by doubts, fears, and insecurities. Now, I know that you both inspire and graciously perfect my imperfect actions. I lean into a world saturated by Your Providence, which is not the same thing as the absence of danger and consequences. Rather, it is the constant reality of purpose, no matter what happens.
How basic it is to act. How fundamental it is to do. Yet, I can not do so with conviction apart from You.
You see and know everything, including the deepest truths about my unique purpose in the cosmos. Only in You can I know the way to go. The most important things about my existence--my life purpose and eternal destiny--must be revealed by you, one day at a time.
You can not be bought, achieved, or earned. From the first moment of my existence, I could only receive You, my greatest need. Your continued presence will always be Your gift to give. I will always stand in need before You, incapable of possessing Your gifts apart from Your generosity.
My soul hungers to see as You see and love as You love. I crave Your joy, Your peace, Your wisdom, Your passion, and Your selflessness.
I wanted to genuinely care about the world around me and the people in it, but it seemed like every good thing I did just increased my ego. I could not escape the prison of self-satisfaction.
The greatest gift You have given me is the capacity to love. You cracked open my self-satisfied heart and began to fill it with Your warm, disinterested love. You are giving me a heart for others and for You, which is the greatest gift that You can give. Your heart is growing in mine daily, but I have to stay with You to keep maturing spiritually.
REVELATIONS
Great things, like Your heart in our heart, start small. But by your grace, they are meant to grow and grow.
Before I knew You, life was nothing but endless striving and never attaining. I worked so hard, but my efforts left me feeling empty because I was dissipating my energies on good things that nevertheless fell short of You. I was created to be filled with Your love and to act in Your love, and nothing less.
When our heart is in Yours, we stop pushing people away because they threaten our independence. We stop seeking to control and dominate circumstances and people for our benefit.
When our heart is in Yours, we finally make space for others. The good we do becomes less and less self-interested. It isn't about being social so that we can see and be seen. It isn't about helping others so that we look good good and feel good about ourselves. Instead, we delight in actually giving ourselves away. We care about “us” and “we.”
When we abide in your love, our individuality becomes a gift that gives us something to share. Far from “transcending” our individuality, we cherish it as a means to being relational, for only individuals can enter into relationship. In total oneness, there is no relationship, only oneness. When our hearts are formed after Your heart, we become increasingly interested in how our individuality intersects with all that is worthwhile outside of us. We seek to bridge what is on the inside with what is on the outside. It's fun and thought provoking to clash and harmonize with others in surprising ways.
When we abide in your love, we seek connection, not power.
Your Love, the pulse of giving and receiving at the heart of existence, is built into the flow of how everything is designed to function. Every relationship is like an ecosystem of mutual rights and duties, me and you. The love You want to give us is the heartbeat of all that is, the love that inspires every love song, the love that created all things. When we step back and admire the view and wonder what it's all about, You, Love, are the answer. Love is the basis of reality, why there is something instead of nothing. Our sinful choices may obscure that truth, but it is no less true for our selfishness.
Everything You have given me, You have given me for the purpose of forming me for relationships. My existence, physiological growth, education, passions, weaknesses, and trials all prepare me to welcome You and others into my life.
Life begins when Love finally finds its way into our hearts. Only then can we participate in the dynamic of giving and receiving that is both the essence of Your inner life and every healthy relationship. When You fill our hearts, we are able to participate in life as it was meant to be lived. Apart from You, life is like a dance, but we remain stiff, awkward, and unwilling to participate.
The purpose of my life is not to be the smartest or most successful person in the room. It isn't to have the easiest life or experience the most pleasures. It isn't to be impressive or popular. The purpose of my life is to enjoy Your company in union with others.
“The good life” can not be put into words. It isn't a philosophy to be grasped, an equation to be solved, a practice to be implemented. The good life is simply You: inexhaustible, passionate, eternal, self-emptying, connected.
We were made for You, and we will not be happy until we are filled up with You and living as You do. You have shown me that the deepest truth about my heart is that it is relational. No matter how much I know, achieve, or have, a relationship—with You—is what I need the most, in any given moment. I have been healed by our friendship in the depths of my heart, not by education, achievement, my own virtue, or getting something. Your presence in my heart continually rejuvenates me.
As You and I spend more time together, my desire for intimacy with others grows, too. I discover that You are trying to connect everyone in Your love. But it starts with us knowing You first, because You capacitate us to give and receive love.
Holy Trinity, as a communion of persons, You teach me to be a person, an individual, and yet also a person for others. The mystery of your individuality and union makes me open to this dual truth about myself: I am an individual, but I am also made for community. It is not one or the other, but both.
You have taught me that holiness is not the perfection of me as an individual per se. I am no longer preoccupied with my personal “report card.” Rather, holiness is the perfection of all of my relationships. How are my relationships doing?
Holiness exists to sustain and animate friendship, romance, community relationships, work relationships, and every kind of relationship, including and above all, our relationship with You. Apart from You, these relationships either fall apart, are seriously compromised, or lack flavor and joy.
Apart from You, I suffer physically, psychologically, and spirituality. Apart from others, it is the same. Relationships are the air I breath and the nutrition of my soul. When I focus on the joy of being relational as you are relational, everything falls into place. It is not me or them, it is always the exciting tension of both, us. You are the vine, and we are the branches. From You, the love that sustains our interior lives and our relationships with others, flows and flows.
You give man a soul in Your image, a soul that is relational, intelligent, and free. Made in Your image for relationships, our minds think, know, and choose. There can be no love without knowledge and free choice. We have the capacity to look another in the eye and say, “I know you and love you. I freely choose you.” Thank you for giving us the gift of free will, which is to say, the capacity to love.
Every happy gathering celebrates togetherness on some level: the dynamic of me impacting you, you impacting me, and the sparks that fly as we step into one shared moment. When we come together, we are so much more than mere individuals in assembly.
There are so many astonishing things in nature: oceans, mountains, forests, and all the creatures that populate them. But only human beings gaze at creation with a mind and a heart that can love, understand, and connect in the way that You do. In You, we transform a beautiful, but otherwise cold and material cosmos into Your temple, the realm where You live, the realm of love, life, and connection. Though inspiring for its beauty, the ocean can not speak back to me; in all of creation, only another human being can. A redwood tree can't give me a hug; only another human being can. And it is human beings that shape colors, words, and sounds into stories, dance, art, and music. How extraordinary we are!
LOVE: DEFINITIONS
To a friend I would say: what joy there is in conversing with you and experiencing mutual comprehension and understanding. How thankful I am that you exist. Heaven will be missing something if you're not there. You are worth my patience. You are worth the wait.
The Catholic tradition speaks of the depths of Your love using a specific term: charity. We experience charity as the pure, disinterested love of God and neighbor. This love is Your gift to give. It is the essence of who You are. The chief punishment of Original Sin was the loss of it, but You desire to restore us in it.
The distinction is made between charity (divine love) and natural love (human love). Human love, the natural desires that propel us towards happiness, health, and connection, can exist apart from charity as strictly natural phenomenon. Yet when a human being welcomes You, charity, into their heart, natural desires become transcendent in scope, strength, and vision. From the beginning, You intended both natural love and charity for us. Charity is meant to encompasses natural love so that we love everything in the right way, and for the right reasons. Charity capacitates us to love in a way that is full, perfect, mature, and wise.
Natural love apart from divine love is finite and flawed. Apart from charity, it is ordered to self-satisfaction. Apart from charity, pride and ignorance remain and trip us up. Charity is opposed to those things. It melts them away and destroys them.
Flawed human love can leave us jaded, believing that love does not exist because it has seemingly failed us. In contrast, in the words of scripture, charity never fails. Charity navigates all the storms and complexities of life, ordinary and extraordinary. Human love apart from charity will fail. Human love in union with charity endures all things.
Charity is the disinterested love of God and neighbor, a seeing of the heart only possible by your grace. Whatever we do--prayer, work, play, feasting, fasting—must be done with the twin goal of loving You and neighbor. Apart from this end, we can only act selfishly. Good acts done for selfish reasons mysteriously distance us from You and others, no matter how meritorious they appear to be.
Because charity is Your love, it is total and all-encompassing. Charity is the origin, rule, and measure of every good thing. In its totality, charity reconciles seeming opposites within itself: structure, freedom, pleasure, self-denial, physical, and spiritual. Therefore, as we mature in charity, we come to know the time and place for every good thing.
Life continually presents us with an array of options and paths. As I mature in charity, I will become increasingly sensitive to what will best help me to grow in my relationship with You. I will become increasingly sensitive to what will best build my neighbor up. You have given us Your Spirit to discern what is most charitable in any given circumstance.
Holy Trinity, Your Love is the big picture, what it's all about. Therefore the teaching of scripture is true: apart from You, we can do nothing. You were always meant to accompany my drives: my love, my intellect, my instincts, my energy. When these gifts become transcendent, it is only because You animate them. Apart from You, I am a car running out of gas, a quest without a compass, a lover without a beloved. I can only expend myself on what is second best. I'm doomed to be uptight when I need to be relaxed and permissive when I should be vigilant. I don't know how to put it all together apart from You.
Any effort to control and force in the ultimate sense is a form of violence. I was never made to run the show. But in trying to control all the outcomes, I was usurping Your rightful place. While I never laid a hand on anyone, the deep truth is that I was not a peaceful person. I was not a peaceful person because control in excess of justice is nothing but manipulation for personal gain. Oh, how I tried to manipulate everything and make it into what I wanted it to be. How deeply controlling I was. How mysteriously violent I was. How at odds my purposes were with Yours, and I didn't even realize it.
PROCESSES
Change happens slowly, but a spring of peace is beginning to well up deep within me. I resent others less for all the ways they falls short. I resent myself less for all the ways I fall short. The layers of triumphs and tragedies in each human life increasingly intrigue me. All people are made in Your image. Every sinner, which is to say every human being, is a miracle: the highest order of creation, with the potential to love without limit and image You in a way that only they can. Only those who are patient with Your process will become Love. Only those who are patient with the processes of others will find love. We are so imperfect, but we are worth the wait.
You see temporal things from an eternal perspective, which is the only way to know them and stay in love with them.
Trials inevitably come and you permit them to bring me closer to You. In times of suffering, you encourage me. But You also let me feel the weight of my suffering so that I will keep striving to be closer to you. The pain I experience in this life deepens my appreciation of You, Heaven, and what my Lord accomplished on the cross. I am not in Heaven, yet. You supply us with the encouragement that we need to carry on, but it is Your will that we carry some weight, emotionally and psychologically.
Pain keeps us connected to ultimate reality: we are a world in the process of being redeemed. We are wheat and tares. All is not well, within ourselves and without. There is a fight to be fought, and work to be done. Pain keeps us connected to the struggle to which we are called until we breath our last breath.
To be filled with You is not to escape the world. It is to see reality more fully in its totality, both the good and the bad. It is to have our hope rooted in what You are accomplishing through our suffering in union with Christ. It is trusting in the ways that you daily build us up, tear us down for our purification, and build us back up again, renewed. It is Your will that we die and rise to new life in an ongoing paschal cycle. Every pain, great and small, is an opportunity to die to sin as I carry my cross. Every joy is a moment of resurrection and a reminder that one day the journey will end in victory and definitive joy.
When the sin in us is punished and our ignorance is replaced with sound knowledge, our hearts are purified and equipped to beat ever more in sync with Yours. Pentecost—the sending of the Holy Spirit—is an ongoing gift that continually flows from Your heart to ours. I feel Your presence in me, simultaneously inflaming my desires for everything You want me to do, and purifying me through the sorrows of the day that You permit.
When I embrace the whole of my experience, opening up myself fully to the highs and the lows, I feel most alive. In that place of radical openness to everything that inspires and everything that hurts, I am closest to You. You are both the God who consoles me and the God who challenges me.
You are found in the confrontations of life: the straight talk, the purifying fire, the righteous judgement, and the hard truth. You are found in the consolations of life: unconditional love, encouragement, mercy, second chances, patience with the process, and Your abiding provision.
Holy Trinity, any effort I make to call down your consolations or manipulate our relationship for my personal happiness is quickly corrected by You. Not every moment is a moment for rejoicing, contentment, or excitement. There are moments for sorrow, striving, and dissatisfaction. You alone determine the times and the seasons. There are good times, bad times, and in-between times. Sometimes life is thrilling and sometimes it is boring. Sometimes I love the people in my life, sometimes they drive me nuts, and sometimes I wonder where they are and how I will find them. Life is what it is. You bring me to maturity by letting me experience the whole of it.
It is often only in hindsight that I understand Your purposes. Sometimes, I prayerfully act with intention. Other times, I find myself reacting to what finds me. Either way, You are always meeting me in the present moment. You guide me in mysterious ways towards the good works that You have prepared for me to do. This is Your world, and we live in it.
In you, I find everything when needed: boundaries, risk taking, self-denial, tenacity, courage, patience, flexibility, forgiveness, openness, passion, dreams, and hope. These are all facets of Love, which You are. In You, I can smoothly shift gears.
Wherever I go, You will be there. You are present even when I'm feeling frustrated and discouraged and You seem absent. Sometimes, You want me to practice trusting that You are present even when I don't feel like You are. You always are. The most important words I can say are these: “Jesus, I trust in You.”
I need to stop looking for You in perfect understanding. I must learn to live by faith and in solidarity with everyone else who suffers and does not know. It is Your will that You lead, and we follow. This is how You make saints out of sinners.
Every time we think we've arrived, You can see a new horizon of growth. You never let us settle. You fill us up with as much of You as we will receive. We start by letting You in just a little. And then a little more. And then far more than we ever imagined. We continually discover new facets of life that have yet to be permeated by charity and brought to natural maturity. Our total maturity, spiritual and physical, can be furthered in every moment if we allow it to.
You have come to give me Your life. Your life, from start to finish, was devoted to solidarity with those who suffer, the salvation of souls, and the building up of the Father's Kingdom. You have called me to live Your life again, within the unique circumstances of my life. You bless me with various resources so that I can do Your work. There is a time and a place to celebrate what is good in life because joy gives You glory. But I'm not here for a vacation. I've been sent into battle. All purposeful living is ultimately linked up with the purpose of growing the human family for Heaven. Outside of this purpose, there may be comforts and convenience, but no lasting purpose and no real joy. You have not summoned us to an easy path of self-gratification. You have summoned us to the way of Love, which is the way of service.
Yet, You do not ask me to carry this weight with my own strength, which is insufficient. You give me Your heart, and only then can I endure the mission You have willed for me.
I struggled to see your love in the trials that created a void in my heart. You planned to fill that void with Yourself and others, but not after my old pattern of living. You took away everything so that I could start over and journey towards my own promised land, a place where my life and relationships would be imbued with charity. Sometimes, Your Providence felt like a forest fire burning down everything I held dear and all I could see was destruction. But in retrospect, I see that You burned away everything that could exist as a compromise in my life. You wanted more for me than I wanted for myself. You have, and continue to, remove things from my life that could obstruct our relationship and my relationships with others.
You chose to pour charity into my heart in a definitive way in the waters of baptism. Charity grows in me every time I receive the Eucharist, Your Body and Blood. You use created things to help me mature in charity. The physical world and every circumstance belongs to You. You use all of it, in every moment, to grow our relationship. I see echoes of Your intelligence in every wise book I read. I feel Your loving comfort in every warm cappuccino. I see Your playfulness in the naughty antics of my kitten. I am reminded that Eternal Life is something to celebrate with every scoop of ice cream. I see Your creativity in every artist. I see Your romance in every married couple. I see Christ crucified in every suffering person.
You wisely give me grace upon grace, no more, no less. You heal me gradually and permit me to struggle with weaknesses so that I will understand that I do not heal myself. You are my healer. I am humbled by the slowness of the process. One of the hardest aspects of discipleship is patience: patience for deliverance from sin, patience for answers, and patience for every good thing we are in need of.
I know that your grace will always catch me. As long as I listen, You will speak. As long as I try to stay open to You, You will help me to navigate this life and return home to You in Heaven. If I welcome You into my life, You will make of my life Heaven on earth. Not in the sense of delivering me from suffering, but in the sense of delivering me from emptiness.
Holy Trinity, to be passionate in all the ways that You are passionate; to be faithful in all the ways that You are faithful; to love unconditionally as You love unconditionally; to embody the fulness of Your love in all of its facets; to physically live out all that You inspire; that is what it means to be Your temple. Your grace keeps us fresh and youthful. Your purposes make us eager.
TEMPLE-BODIES
Apart from Your divine presence, the temple in Jerusalem was a mere building. But when You chose to descend upon it, it became Your house, and the definitive place of encounter between You and Your people. You have always loved temples: places where You and man, the physical and spiritual, meet. There was the Garden of Eden, the Ark of the Covenant, the temple in Jerusalem and, in these last days, the Body of Our Lord, into which we are incorporated.
My body, incorporated into Christ, is Your temple. You descend upon it and bring it to life with charity. The purpose of my existence is to be Your living temple.
Because I am meant to be Your temple, all of my life must be brought into conformity with Your purposes. There are ways I need to be humbled, skills I need to develop, a worldview You intend for me to cultivate, dreams You want me to pursue, and people who are meant to be in my life. You are intentional in designing everything about my life in the same way that, under the Old Covenant, You asked that Your temple be made to exact specifications. Only then can the union of the natural and spiritual be perfect.
Just as You slowly rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem, allowing for false starts, stops, and long periods of waiting, You are carefully forming me into a saint of Your design upon whom Your presence will descend in an ever deepening way. I experience false starts, stops, and long periods of waiting in my journey towards You. I continue to experience Your slow and perfect rebuilding as I anticipate the maturity of my vocation. This process of tearing down, rebuilding, and renewing will continue until You take me to You at the end of my life.
You have a plan for using our work, play, rest, friendships, dreams, creativity, personality, relationships, hobbies, etc. as the concrete means through which Your Spirit will work in this world. As human beings, we are both physical and spiritual and You intend to make use of the whole of our lives. My life experiences are the building blocks of my temple-body. All of life is sacred and nothing should be wasted. We should do everything with intention and love knowing that all of it matters to You.
Holy Trinity, guide us in the concrete circumstances of our lives so that in thought, word, and deed, our lives are ever more conformed to the life of the Word made flesh. Jesus walked in perfect union with You in everything He did. Help us to be like Him.
So much of our lives, indeed the best things in our lives, are surprises. We don't know where the good thing came from, but it did. We would never have searched for it first, so You sent it. We didn't know we needed it, but You did.
Try this, and now that. Go here. Talk to this person. Pray this. Go without this. Don't worry about that. Focus on this instead. You are always speaking to us in our hearts and helping us to become Your mature sons and daughters.
Since You are supremely Provident, we should take great interest in everything that is. The fundamental question is what are You putting together? And how do we get out of Your way? Instead of forcing our way through life, we should start from a place of receptivity, openness, and curiosity. What are You doing now, and what will You do? How do the desires that You have planted in our hearts intersect with what is actually happening?
You meet us at the front, middle, and back end of every action: You inspire us to do something, You help us see it through to completion, and You decide how it impacts the world around us and what happens next. We must be open to Your presence through the entire process. We must be desiring and persistent, and then ultimately surrender the result to You.
Root level receptivity to Your plans can be concealed by our exertion and enthusiasm. Outwardly, it can look like us and our effort. But the dynamite that started it all belongs to You alone. If You don't ignite it, it won't spark. If You don't coordinate it, it will never come together. Big events get my attention. But equally impactful are the layers upon layers of daily life. You have formed me through all the little things. All of the little things matter.
Lord, my heart is deep and mysterious. Only You know what I need to experience so that what needs to be made clear, will be made clear. Help me to be patient as You slowly and perfectly complete Your work in my soul and in the souls of others.
LITURGICAL
You have chosen to use the liturgy to form us in love. We experience the giving and receiving that characterizes love through both the Liturgy of the Mass and the liturgy of daily life. In the Mass, I receive You in the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. I respond to You prayerfully, absorb as much spiritual nutrition as I can, and then go out into the world to share what I have received. In the liturgy of daily life, I receive You through the prayers I say, the art I consume, the books I read, the nature I enjoy, the music I make, the meals I relish, the places I explore, the people I love, and more. I try to share with others what You give to me. Love is always a gift to be first received from You, Love itself. And then it is Your will that we give it away.
There may be times when I don't feel like going to mass or doing daily life, again. But what I must always remember is that these liturgies align my life with the Heavenly Liturgy, the Heavenly Wedding Feast, where all is continual praise and perfect love. The liturgies of life are a gift that enables us to temporally participate in heavenly things. If I surrender to them and choose participation instead of isolation, they will enable me to think, desire, and act with You.
When we live life in union with You, everything about life becomes liturgical. In other words, every act becomes an occasion of praise and giving back to You what we have first received. In so doing, we complete the divine cycle of love that You instituted from the beginning in Your relationship with Adam, our first father in the temple-garden: You enrich us with Your gifts, we receive them with joy, and then we make an offering of them back to You in thanksgiving.
Eucharist = thanksgiving
You rightly delight in all of Your creation: the whole spectrum of human life, human nature, and all of nature. In the beginning, You pronounced that it was very good because it reveals You. Lord, help me to love all that You have made and receive all of Your gifts with gratitude. Help me to see Your face in everything You have made and use everything for Your glory. Help me to continually lift up the whole of my life to You in a spirit of thanksgiving. Help me thereby to make of my whole life a mass.
INCARNATE
To image Your infinitude, the world is filled with so much worth doing. How do we best harness our time, treasure, talents, and energies? How can a finite human being live out infinite, Trinitarian love? What we truly desire is freedom to live and act as You would, because righteousness is simply what we are. Your divine life itself is what we crave: not to be taught what to do, but to know. Not to be taught what to want, but to desire it already. Not to be taught how to act, but to rightly do.
Your divine life is so ineffable, that the written word alone could never fully communicate it. Your divine life is a living reality: You. In the Sacraments, God, You give us Yourself so that we will be transformed into You. And because a living example would help, the Word became flesh to show us the way of divine/human unity.
The prophets announced that You would come. Mouthpieces for You, they prepared the way. But their utterances, however compelling, only told us to watch and wait. For centuries, Israel waited for You, the Word made flesh, the definitive revelation. Your quiet, ordinary life in Nazareth taught us that the Trinitarian life is surprisingly human: it should revolve around worship, work, family, and community, in whatever way Your Providence plants us. Holiness means that we go about daily life as a participation in Your divine life.
I was once in an art museum and walked from the classical wing into the Christian wing. Imagery of robust, muscled nudes gave way to the imagery of a mother cradling her child. In that moment, I understood what makes You different. You are the creator of the universe, but You do not exercise Your power for the purposes of dominance. You reign in love. You can be tender and vulnerable.
99. You are willing to entrust Yourself to others. Our Lord demonstrated this as a baby in the care of Mary and Joseph. Every baptism is another Christmas when You are born anew in the manger of our soul. Your divine life in us becomes vulnerable to our care. I will never be able to give myself to others and grow in love until I can be meek and vulnerable. Only Your heart can melt my heart so that it will yield to others.
100. Holy Trinity, You long to unite our heartbeat with Yours. In us, your Incarnation is extended. May we embody the love You continually pour into our hearts. Lord, make my heart ever more like Your Sacred Heart. My heart in You is the treasure of my life. It is what I closely guard and grow. I pray it pulses with Your holiness.
101. The greatest joy we can give You is to freely return Your love. It is all we can give You, for everything else we have, we have received from You. Holy Trinity, You have given us all of Yourself. Help me to give You all of myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment