Because of God’s continuing love, the human spirit can never be completely obliterated. No matter how oppressed we are, by other people and circumstances or by our own internal addictions, some small capacity for choice remains unvanquished.
We may go through a great deal of humbling, if not outright humiliation, before we come to this simplicity of hope. We do not like admitting defeat, and we will struggle valiantly, even foolishly, to prove that we can master our destinies. God, in whose image we are made, instills in us the capacity for relentless tenacity, an assertiveness that complements our yearning hunger for God. But most of us overdo it; our spirit of assertiveness quickly becomes a spirit of pride. We will never really turn to God in loving openness as long as we are handling things well enough by ourselves. And it is precisely our most powerful addictions that cause us to defeat ourselves, that bring us to the rock bottom realization that we cannot finally master everything. Thus, although in one sense addiction is the enemy of grace, it can also be a powerful channel for the flow of grace. Addiction can be, and often is, the thing that brings us to our knees. pp18-20
My Reflection:
In the parable of the weeds and the wheat (Mt 13:24-30) Jesus captures one of the deepest aspects of our human experience: trouble will be there until the end. We see this mixture of good and evil in all levels of reality: the family, our community, our parish, our society and most of all within ourselves.
Self-knowledge is fundamental to Carmelite spirituality. This new self-awareness is accomplished in an openness to life that is guided by prayer and personal discernment. This pursuit of self-knowledge is generally a reluctant step forward. We come face to face with our personal darkness in an often tedious and gradual process. Our addictions, attachments, illusions and prejudices bubble up to reveal a false self that has been steering us away from walking with Jesus. The temptation is great to forsake the serious and difficult issues. We want to settle down into our area of comfort which is often quite the superficial. When we reject the call to face up to ourselves truthfully, we become the source of our own problems and suffering because the heart is moving away from the truth. It is on a pathway to nowhere. Once again, we need to turn back to Jesus.
We are creatures, limited but called to the infinite. We are called beyond our little dreams to a God of unlimited and unconditional love. God’s mercy is always on the prowl, always seeking us. A mystic of the Middle Ages, Julian of Norwich, put it beautifully when she said: “First comes the fall and then the recovery from the fall. Both are the mercy of God.” Her message is clear. Even in our sin God finds a way to love us.
The grace is in the struggle. Life is never complete. It is always messy. It is the nature of things that all relationships are incomplete. There is a built-in change factor. We cannot stop the clock. The kids grow up too quickly and even more rapidly, middle age passes on to old age.
John of the Cross has good counsel for these inevitable crisises of life. He says that God’s love is hidden in the turmoil and one is not able to see or experience this love at the beginning. John lays out a simple response: patience, trust and perseverance. Things are happening during the unrest. The false gods are slowly exposed for the passing vanity that they truly are. Our heart gradually becomes free of the deceptions that blinded us and concealed our way to God.
The grace is in the struggle. Enter the struggle of life. Take life on. Accept no cheap grace or no easy answer. There is gold to be found in our difficulties. The burdens of life open the pathway to God when we persevere in patience. The goal is not simply to evade the problems but to see the problems as an invitation to a true encounter with God. The grace is in the struggle.
