Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Today’s text

Philippians 3:4b-8a

If anyone does claim to rely on them, my claim is better. Circumcised on the eighth day of my life, I was born of the race of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrew parents. In the matter of the Law, I was a Pharisee; as for religious fervor, I was a persecutor of the Church; as for the uprightness embodied in the Law, I was faultless. But what were once my assets I now through Christ Jesus count as losses. Yes, I will go further: because of the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, I count everything else as loss.

Reflection

The words awaken memory, Jesus. You told tales: the pearl of great price, the treasure hidden in a field for which one gives everything to purchase. Such is the value of what you are and bring.

This comes first as intuition and then experience. We hear your words, imagine your face or feel the mysterious something stirred in us by the presence of the love you are. You awaken in us awareness of the Love who is the Father, the One you sought in the quiet hours of your days.

And we know: life is not bread alone. There is bread that feeds forgotten parts of our soul we barely knew were there. There is a Love that plays at the deep heart of things, even in us, beckoning us to come home. It sings for us to come and know, come and rest, come and join the song of Love in time and space. Come and know the Love who dwells hidden within, waiting to be awakened by the Love and who labors in all we touch and see.

Come and feel alive, again or perhaps for the first time. Come and know the joy for which you are intended, for which I made you. So says the Lord, the One I cannot see or imagine, but yet whom I hear beckoning me in every love I have ever known.

Come pray out whatever is in you. Bring it all. It does not matter what. Come and discover the blessed awareness that washes fresh the soul when we find that all else pales before the knowledge of this Christ, this love, this wonder.

Then and only then are we free. In knowing him, the soul is released from bondage to disordered desire and cravings that disturb and burden.

And we know: this Christ, this Love, is the pearl of great price. And it lies hidden within us, never far from us, waiting to be awakened by the slightest invitation of willing souls.

Pr. David L. Miller