Today’s readings, I have to admit, caused me considerable apprehension. What to make of them?  What to make of them for you?

With the help of a Dictionary of the Bible and a Concordance, this is what I have come up with:

1. the Spirit of God fills the whole earth   
2. our life is meant to be a life of wholeness, a life of single-minded devotion to God so that an attempt to live by the standards of “the world” while claiming to be Christian is out of the question
3. it is the intention behind our actions that matters –

        
To each one of these statements we can express our agreement, our whole-hearted conviction. Is that not true?  So I looked at them a little more closely. What do we need to consider?

So to the first statement, I ask:  what is it that fills our hearts? What is it that we really want?  Are we so pre-occupied with what we have to accomplish, with doing things right, with measuring up, with meeting expectations that we can not attend to the emptiness of our hearts?  Are our hearts filled with regret, with guilt, with past hurts, with whatever, that there is no room for the Spirit? no openness that allows Her to enter and possess us? Are we even so concerned about our prayer, that we pray the “right” way, that we pray as we “should”, that we don’t even allow the Spirit to enter in and transform us? Those who were at the Spirituality Forum heard this story, but it is a good one and perhaps they won’t mind hearing it again:

It was high noon in Manhattan, and the streets were, as usual, buzzing with crowds, cars, taxis, horns blowing, brakes screeching, sirens wailing. Two men were making their way together through the crowd. One was a native New Yorker, and the other a visiting farmer from Kansas. Suddenly the farmer stopped in his tracks. “Hold on,” he said, “I hear a cricket.” His friend replied, “Are you kidding? Even if there were a cricket around here, which isn’t likely, you would never be able to hear it over all this noise.”

The farmer remained quiet for a few minutes, then walked several paces to the corner where a bush was growing in a large cement planter.  He turned several leaves over and found the cricket. The city man was flabbergasted. “What great ears you have,” he said.“No,” the farmer replied, “it’s a matter of what you’ve been conditioned to listen for. Look, I’ll show you.”  With that, he pulled a handful of coins from his pocket and let them drop to the sidewalk. As if on signal, every head on the block turned. “You see,” said the farmer, “you hear what you want to hear. It’s a matter of what you’re listening for.”   (  #230, A World of Stories  by William Bausch)

It depends upon what we are listening for. It depends upon what we are looking for. It depends upon what we REALLY WANT! The mystics and holy men and women of God, especially St John of the Cross, know that it is our desire that matters. What is it that we are willing to give our life for?   

Meister Eckhart says this:   

It is your destiny to see as God sees, to know as God knows, to feel as God feels. How is this possible? How?  Because Divine Love cannot defy its very self. Divine Love will be eternally true to its own being, and its being is giving all it can, at the perfect moment. And the greatest gift God can give is His own experience. Every object, every creature, every man, woman, and child has a soul and it is the destiny of all, To see as God sees, to know as God knows, to feel as God feels, To Be as God Is. (Love Poems From God, Daniel Ladinsky)

What is that you really want? What are you listening for? Which brings us to the second statement,  “our life is meant to be a life of wholeness. A life of single minded devotion to God...” and the following question: How are we divided within ourselves? What of the world has captured us?

Oh, not riches, or money, or even the special luxurious clothes that are advertised in the New York Times for 2 or 3 thousand dollars  apiece.  But for what does your heart long? What are the idols that have captured you? We don’t worship idols, you say. Really? Are you sure? Have you an image of what you “ought” to be?  Have you an image of the “right way” to pray? Or are you free enough simply “to be” who you are, despite the emptiness, the loneliness? And thus, in accepting who you are , “ knowing that it is your destiny to know as God knows, to feel as God feels, to BE as God IS”

Which brings us to the third question: why do you do what you do?  If it is the intention behind our actions, rather than the actions themselves that matter, what is our intention

Why do you get up in the morning?  Why do you work hard, serve on boards, travel, give talks, give homilies, teach, be a spiritual director, whatever?

We have been blessed and chosen and loved to death by God’s Self and God’s Son. We are called by name and we are called, urged, drawn to call God by a name that only we know. We have been  asked to do great things for God: to take part with the Christ in the Redemption of the world, to hold in our hearts with Him the sufferings of the world, to shower this world with love, the very love of God’s own Heart. And every action, everything we do can fill the world with love – or not.

I am sure that you have heard that a butterfly landing on a lotus plant in India affects the winds coming off the lake in Chicago. This is a physical reality. The physicists have proof of this ( I am not a scientist). And you know, too, that every material reality is a sign, a symbol if you will, an indication of a spiritual reality. So every act of love, no matter how small, affects the entire universe, affects the war in Iraq, the struggle in Lebanon.

Even Sophie, in a scientifically less sophisticated time knew this. In speaking of the Eucharist, she said:   

I felt called to be simply in His presence, united to Him, allowing His life and the feelings of His Heart to enter within me,  as a canal that collects the water from a spring, like a piece of wood that allows itself to catch on fire. But just as the fire spreads or a stone thrown into the water creates concentric circles that keep widening, I felt that the presence of Jesus, the “weight” of His love in the Eucharist was going forth and reaching each person to the ends of the earth.

So there you have it. It would seem that we are being invited, challenged perhaps, to open ourselves totally to the Spirit of a God who wants nothing less than to live again in this world, through us just as we are, drawing the whole world, the whole universe, to  complete union, a union of compassionate love, of merciful love. This is, indeed, what we are called to: to manifest the love of the Heart of Jesus.

Justine Lyons,RSCJ