Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 9:30-32

After leaving that place they made their way through Galilee; and he [Jesus] did not want anyone to know, because he was instructing his disciples; he was telling them, 'The Son of man will be delivered into the power of men; they will put him to death; and three days after he has been put to death he will rise again.' But they did not understand what he said and were afraid to ask him.

Reflection

The gate to the kingdom of God’s holy love is the way of surrender. It is the way of giving yourself to the moments of your life, to the loves you are given to love, to the needs, great and small, of the precious souls life has given to you.

The kingdom opens before you as you refuse to flee the deep commitments of your life when they grow difficult or the way gets hard.

It is in such times that we begin to glow with the greatest beauty that shines from the human soul, the glorious light of losing yourself in love at the point of another’s need.

Just so, the needs of others, our commitments to one another as spouses and parents, our commitments to children and friends, relatives or strangers for that matter, are the door to resurrection and renewal.

I think of this every time I see a son or daughter standing fast at the bedside of their dieing mother or father, every time I see tears trickling down the cheeks of a parent burning with the desire to help their troubled child, knowing there is little they can do.

They shine with a glory beyond their own, having surrendered the idea that life is about seeking the most comfortable way--or that it is about making oneself important, … at least greater than the people to whom we tend to compare ourselves.

This is all gone. But it is not loss, as Jesus knows … and shows us.

In the surrender to love, for the sake of love, we throw ourselves into the Mystery of the Love who promises to raise us each time we fall, who assures that renewal and new life come exactly at the point where we seem to be losing what is most precious.

Jesus seeks to share this consciousness that is in him so that it might dwell also in us. Then, too, we can live each day with assurance, trusting the Divine Love who brings life out of death and new beginnings from ashes.

Pr. David L. Miller