I wrote some time ago that I’d be sharing some reflections on “life” and “faith” and “culture” from some really smart and holy persons. I’ve failed to do that!
So here’s a reboot of that promise called “Spiritual Masters”.
Here are two little passages from The Essence of Prayer by Ruth Burrows OCD. We so often think of God as infinite in power, all knowing, with holiness unbounded. Here she describes God as having a self-sacrificing nature as part of His very being. Wonderfully shocking when you think about it.
We stand in awe of the self-sacrificing ‘folly’ of God’s love for us. When God becomes human (Jesus) it is as the sacrificed one, the one who lays down his life in love. “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” (Jn 14.9) Can we not say God sacrificed Himself in creating the world and becoming our God?
It is as if self–sacrifice – which, after all, is the law of all genuine love – lies in the depths of the Divine Reality who is Love.
To be taken into that Love, to live with the life of God, must mean that sacrifice becomes our way of being too. God loved the world so much that he held nothing back from us, not even his own Son. P. 84
If we want to know God, we must look at Jesus crucified. We must gaze and gaze, not so much on the suffering, but on a love that is absolute. This is God; this is what God is really like. P. 46
Then . . . daily, secretly in prayer, in the gray simple moments of everyday life, we let that sacrificial love that is God, be our way of living too.
That “foolish” Love of God is poured out on us at every moment but most especially in the Eucharist when God takes our offering of bread and wine (a representation of ourselves) and returns to us His crucified and risen Son—which is the Father’s love for us.
Fr. Tim
PS. Spend some time with this. Feelings may not be there. That’s okay. Just say “Amen” …..and mean it!!
