Grace

There is grace enough for each day. No matter what the day brings there is grace enough for the moment and for the day. The reason why there is grace enough for each day is that Christ is present in each moment of every day. No matter what we lose or gain Christ is there. It is His presence that brings joy, patience, fullness and even beauty in all of life.

The Eucharist is a perfect example. The words of institution start with "on the night in which he was betrayed"...This awful night for Christ was the night in which he gave us his body and blood so that we might know life. We gather around his broken body and shed blood and yet proclaim life, love and forgiveness.

That is because for Christ nothing is foreign. Our pain, anger loneliness, pride, folly, hate, greed are not obstacles to his presence. In fact he is present there offering forgiveness and new life. Remember he came to call sinners, not the righteous.

What this means is that whatever I discover today, whatever road I may be lead down, my Beloved Lord is there. The Bible says that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. (Romans 8). What a great reason for joy and hope, the ever present Christ walking with each one of us down whatever road we are led. Oh that my eyes would be open to see his prescence in all things and in all people!!!

Christ

My illness has drawn me closer to Christ. The Christ that I am drawn closer to is the one who suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, and whom God raised on the third day. My suffering is meaningless and vain if not for the crucified one who came and lived in a particular time and in a particular place. I am drawn to love him more because it is his scared hands that hold me in my pain and tiredness. It is his pierced side that my head lays against when I am tired and feel depressed about how my body feels. It is his resurrected body that promises resurrection to my pain filled body. It is this One who deeply understands and gives me the grace that I need each day.

The past several weeks have been very laborious for me and difficult. Yet the place I consistently find joy is where I see the hand of Christ at work. As I look I see the Crucified One more and more. I saw him yesterday in the smile of my son and the beauty of my daughter. I saw him in the long suffering of my wife and in the honesty of my men's group. I saw him today in the women who were making quilts and packing school kits. I saw him in our volunteers showing mercy by giving out food to the needy.

This morning I saw him in the sun and in my dogs and in the beauty of nature. This is what sustains me each day and gives me reason to smile and for hope. It is the historic Christ that allows us to enter into the paschal mystery. What grace and love flow from his hands into our hearts!

Ramblings

True spirituality can only be unassuming and ordinary for the spiritual life is about the holiness of the ordinary. Jesus was fully God and fully Human. It is tempting to think that the saints are somehow not human, that they are superhuman or super divine. No, they are human and filled with the Divine. They are perhaps a little more transparent than the rest of us. This transparency doesn’t make them otherworldly; the opposite is true. They become more human and more mundane. They are no longer caught up with the grand illusion of bigger, better, faster. They are grounded in the gift of the now, the present. Saints live their lives in the moment by moment awareness of Presence. It is to see life as it really is.

To the uninitiated they may appear too ordinary, too bland. This is because the uninitiated is looking with the wrong set of eyes. To say it better they are looking with good eyes through a distorted lens. The holiest man is the humblest man (Phil 2). I use the word man because I am describing the Son of Man who chose not to accentuate his divinity by calling himself the Son of God. Rather he emphasizes his humanity.

The problem with this spirituality for some is that is does nothing. It doesn’t solve cancer or cure my neurological problems. There is no heroism or dynamism. There simply is a still point where all makes sense and all is fused. This point fades and the memory of it dies more slowly. What lingers is a sense of the divine in all, even in the pain, failures, ego trips and anger. Being a human is not a barrier to the Divine, it is a sacred vessel to the Mystery that we glimpse from time to time. Saints simply glimpse longer, deeper and it pervades more of their sight. Therefore, they of all people are more human, no more and no less.