Friday, December 29, 2011

Today’s text

From a sermon by Saint Leo the Great (pope, 391/400-461)

Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God’s kingdom.

Reflection

The greatest dignity of the human soul is to bear the nature and substance of God--to know oneself as part of the body of God, sharing in God’s life. I know this dignity and joy and would know it fully, which is why I am here, writing again.

In you, Holy One, I live and move and have my being. I come here to consent to you one more time, as I do again and again. I acknowledge you as the Maker and Lover of my being.

Thank you for my life, for the breath I breathe that it not my own, but gift. Thank you for the love that is Love, which is to say … You, which I bear in my tiny heart.

I come here again to allow your immensity greater access to my little life. I come so that you might fill me with the love that is your nature and substance.

This filling appears to be a lifetime project. I pretend to be more advanced in this process than I am, but I am constantly a beginner. That’s all I will ever be.

I know the immensity of your fullness of the Love you are, only to feel cold and unfulfilled the next hour.

I see again the image that appeared at Christmas. I see all that is surrounded by you. I see how you contain us--and everything, every world, every cell, every leaf and snowflake. You encircle and envelop us like the air, like the rays of the sun, like the waters of sea.

I see your silent immensity, a constant flow of liquid love, seeking entry into the narrow confines of our being that you may flow into and through us.

Your substance seeks entry that you may seep--or rush!--into the interior of who and what we are … that we may become what you are, fully sharing your nature. And in precious moments, the Love you are fills me, and I taste your nature as it becomes the substance and of my own heart.


Then, it is, that I know my dignity as a bearer of the Divine Wonder. Then, it is, that all that is in me--struggles and failures, sin and confusion, even the longing ache of my unfulfilled life--are washed away.

All that is left is the joy of knowing you.

Pr. David L. Miller