Monday, September 25, 2006

Today’s reading

Philippians 1:21-26

“I know I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith, so that I may share abundantly in your boasting in Christ Jesus when I come to you again” (Phil. 1:25-26).

Prayer

What progress is there for us, O Changeless Compassion? What advance toward completion can I know? The struggles and sins that cloud my joy and erode my determination to serve you remain. They leave for a time only to reappear with subtle twists in unexpected places to hector my heart. They unnerve me, these struggles, stealing my sleep and disquieting my soul so that my mind and heart are not pure, singular and fully given to you and to all that pains your divine heart.

Decades come and go, and I continue to trip over the same fault lines in my soul: Am I good enough? Will they like what I do? Why should that matter? Why do my efforts so often feel so partial, so inadequate, so imperfect? And why am I so self-absorbed? I march around the same center, the same struggles that have been with me since I was small, never moving far beyond them.

What progress is this? Will I never know you so well that nothing else matters? Sometimes I do. There are moments, times and seasons when I no longer march around the crumbling tower of self, but my heart fixes upon your love alone, and that is all I see or can see. Freedom of heart and a quiet mind then become a bubbling spring from which love and wonder flow, a stream of blessing from the infinite depths of your eternity.

Self-absorbed fears instantly dissolve in that boundless spring, leaving joy and the desire to know nothing but you, to be wholly given to the love that bears your face, blessed Jesus. Is this progress? Surely, I will fall back again into self-preoccupation and the struggles that cloud such clear vision. But I will have known true freedom, the fulfillment of soul you alone give. And I will seek your face. Let me seek and see you this day, so that I may know the holy completion you alone can give. Amen.