Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Today’s text

Luke 6:19-20

People tormented by unclean spirits were also cured and everyone in the crowd was trying to touch him because power came out of him that cured them all. Then fixing his eyes on his disciples he said: How blessed are you who are poor: the kingdom of God is yours.

Reflection

You turned your eyes from the desperate and hoping to find your friends. Overwhelming joy and gratitude swelled in your inner being, and you cried out, “Blessed. Blessed are you.”

I know why. You were healing, touching, making whole the broken lives and hearts of those who were loved far more than they could imagine. Their lives were … and are … enveloped in the height and depth of grace, held in the arms of the Loving Mystery for all eternity.

You saw this. No, you felt it. This grace expanded your heart to infinite proportions removing any and all doubt about the fundamental reality of our lives. We are held, known and treasured by an incalculable love that has neither beginning nor end.

Your heart stretched to the uttermost reaches of Earth’s forgotten corners,--and on … to the cosmic reach of darkest space. Your heart took it all in … and loved it, loved it as the Loving Mystery who is the Father embraces and loves it all.

Your heart and the Father’s were one, and now your heart and mine are no longer two but the same.

For a single moment, the blink of any eye, I enter your consciousness and see with the love that is there looking out at me … and at all that is.

And I, too, know beyond question why you cry out, “blessed are you poor.”

My faltering words cannot capture it, but I know you look at our broken and confused lives and see them enfolded in grace unbounded, and we in our poverty can receive, can know the grace that swells your heart in this tiny instant.

Our hearts, too, can expand and embrace the uttermost parts and the outermost reaches. We who are poor can know this. We can be this, for we know the emptiness of our hands and the incompleteness of our souls.

Yet, only in this state can we be filled by the fullness of the Love who is all Fullness, the holy and Loving Mystery who, in this moment, filled you, Jesus, and moved you to embrace the world without reservation in utter joy.

Make this joy mine not only for a moment, but for all time. It is in this moment, seeing through your eyes, that I know the end of time, and it is Love unspeakable.

And I know but one word for you, “blessed, blessed, blessed.

Beyond my wildest imagining, you are blessed, and it is exactly this into which you draw me. And all I have to offer is a single word of praise and a gratitude that’s beyond all words.

Pr. David L. Miller