Day 17 God's grace

 Thank you all for continuing to read.  It makes me feel connected to a greater community. Merton is in his last year at Columbia.  Externally he continues to do well but inside he is hitting rock bottom.  Both his grandparents die within 14 months of each other.  He gets rejected by one particular girl and he fears he is getting an ulcer.  He states,

"Here I was, scarcely four years after I had left Oakham [ his high school] and walked out into the world that I thought I was going to ransack and rob of all its pleasures and satisfaction.  I had done what I intended, and now I found that it was I who was emptied and robbed and gutted.  What a strange thing! In filling myself, I had emptied myself, In grasping things, I had lost everything." Pg 163-164 

He is downtown and buys a book he sees in the window, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy by Etienne Gilson.  He finds out the book is Catholic because it has a "Nihil Obstat" in the front and feels tricked. He almost throws it out but reads it and it gives him his first look at actual coherent theology.  The next four pages took me back to undergrad as he speaks about the most important terms he learned in the book.  I will spare you the philosophy lesson except for one term that I think is important, " sanctifying grace".  We have used this term a lot already in 16 days though we normally shorten it to "God's grace" or even "grace".  

What is "grace"?  It is God's own life, shared by us.  God's life is Love.  Deus caritas est.  By grace we are able to share in the infinitely self-less love of Him Who is such pure actuality that He needs nothing and therefore cannot conceivably exploit anything for selfish ends.  pg 169       

So I meditated on this.  God shares His own life with us daily, wow!  If that doesn't make you feel special I don't know what will.  Do I let Him ?  Do I share my life with Him?  I don't know about you but I do, but only to a point.  I am afraid if I really, really let Him in He will turn my life upside down and that scares me.  

My prayer for today; God, let me say "Yes" to Your grace, let me share my life with you unconditionally as You do with me. 

Pax

 

Joe

 

Day 4 Cut through the clutter

 

Day 4 and still going strong!  Thanks for visiting! 

Got through another 10 pages today.  Thomas is traveling in France with his dad looking for inspiration for painting for his father.  He gives a lists of towns then states:

"This land was long wild with heresy, and with the fake mysticism that tore men away from the Church and from the Sacraments, and sent them into hiding to fight their way to some strange suicidal nirvana."   pg 38

So yesterday, one page earlier in the book if you are paying real close attention, Merton is talking about how great the land and all the structures are.  How everything is, according to its nature, ordered to God.  Now all of a sudden the land was wild with heresy?  Dude, make up your mind! 

I think to understand this we have to talk briefly about intent.  While by its nature everything is ordered to God, man  can mess this up.  Let's take a knife for example.  A knife is a good thing.  It can cut food and carve wood into art which makes people happy. But man can use this good and useful object to ill intent to stab people.  This stabbing can kill and maim. Make sense?  

What strikes me in Thomas' statement is how much wonderful stuff we have been blessed with often turns to fake mysticism.  It is so easy to be tempted to use these things to move the world away from God which to me would be the definition of a "strange suicidal nirvana". [ not the band Nirvana though, I liked them!]  We have cell phones, internet, social media, 24/7 productive schedules, stuff that should make this world a much better place but I am not sure it is.  Loneliness is on the rise, as is suicide.  So what can we do?  WE make a difference where WE can.  Let's not give in to fake mysticism that our current culture is trying to sell us. The truth has been with us for thousands of years and will be with us till the end of time.  All we need to do is stop and listen, even if just for a moment.  

My prayer for today Lord; Help me hear Your voice through all the clutter of today.  

 

Pax

Joe   

Third Day of my Lenten journey

 

 Third day, people are still viewing so I will keep posting; thanks.  Today Merton lays a big one on us:

"The whole landscape, unified by the church and its heavenward spire, seemed to say: this is the meaning of all created things: we have been made for no other purpose than that men may use us in raising themselves to God, and in proclaiming the glory of God. We have been fashioned, in all our perfection, each according to his own nature, and all our natures ordered and harmonized together, that man's reason and his love might fit in this one last element, this God given key to the meaning of the whole."  Pg 37

 

The background here is Thomas' father has come home and taken him back to France.  They settle in a small French town with a church in the center of the town.  Thomas describes that visually the church dominates everything in the town, all roads lead to it.  When he is hiking in the hills and looks towards the town it is the church he sees. 

This statement really spoke to me.  I could probably spend a week on it.  One of St Loyola's tenets is that God is found in all things.  I think that Merton is beautifully summarizing the thought that all creation is there for man to use to praise God.  The Pope's encyclical on the environment, Laudato  Si speaks to this. Anything man creates or does should be to help proclaim the glory of God.  This obviously doesn't happen but that is what we should strive for.  What a great world this would be if everyone tried this for one day!  Baby steps my friends, baby steps. 

My prayer for today is; Lord, help me to remember that the earth is a gift to be cherished.  Give me wisdom and strength so that all I use and all I do will be done to give glory to You today.  Amen

 Pax

 

Joe