Every time we come near God, it is either life or death we are confronted with. It is life if we come to him in the right spirit, and are renewed by him. It is death if we come to him without the spirit of worship and a contrite heart; it is death if we bring pride or arrogance. Therefore, before we set out on the so-called thrilling adventure of prayer, it cannot be too
It is said that only a few find the narrow way that leads to life and that we must strive to enter by the narrow door. For many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able (Luke 13: 24). The explanation is to be found precisely in our unwillingness to persecute ourselves. We overcome after a fashion, perhaps, our serious and dangerous vices, but there it stops. The small
NAKED, small and helpless, you now pass on to the most difficult of all human tasks: to conquer your own selfish desires. Ultimately it is just this “self-persecution” on which your warfare depends, for as long as your selfish will rules, you cannot pray to the Lord with a pure heart: Thy will be done. If you cannot get rid of your own greatness, neither can you lay yourself open for real greatness. If you
God says, “Give me your heart.” And then, in answer to my puzzlement, I hear him say, “Your heart is where your treasure is.” My treasures—here they are: persons, places occupations things experiences of the past the future’s hopes and dreams. I pick each treasure up, say something to it, and place it in the presence of the Lord. How shall I “give” these treasures to him? In the measure that
YOUR EYE IS THE LAMP OF YOUR BODY; WHEN YOUR EYE IS SOUND, YOUR WHOLE BODY IS FULL OF LIGHT; BUT WHEN IT IS NOT SOUND, YOUR BODY IS FULL OF DARKNESS. —LUKE 11:34 Look into yourself and examine your reactions to persons and situations, and you will be appalled to discover the prejudiced thinking behind your reactions. It is almost never the concrete reality of this person or thing that you are responding to.
“What do you mean by ‘things of this world,’ Father?” Maria asked. “Material possessions, career, success, ideological fixations, everything that steals the heart. The result is one: our passion for God is transformed into the passion for created things of no ultimate and eternal value, be they power, fame, politics, smoking, sex, money, and so on.” “This is the meaning of idolatry,” I added. “We worship our own creations.” “Yes, precisely.” “Is fasting a way
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind (and with all your strength). Matthew 22:37, Mark, 12:30, Luke 10:27 How do I love Thee my Lord? I love Thee when I turn my back to bitterness, forgiving spite and might To caress and bless the broken-hearted walking dead. I love Thee as I abandon sleep to dawn metallic bangles and belts-tight
So there has grown within the rich Christian tradition the idea of integrated knowledge, which assumes the necessity of reason, but in conjunction with the other faculties and senses, such as willpower, love, and the awareness of beauty. Integrated knowledge is knowledge in faith; it combines human nature in a personal movement of encounter and communion. By this communion the fullness of the godhead is communicated to human nature, reaching the very ground of the
I CAME TO CAST FIRE UPON THE EARTH; AND WOULD THAT IT WERE ALREADY KINDLED! —LUKE 12:49 If you want to know what it means to be happy, look at a flower, a bird, a child; they are perfect images of the kingdom. For they live from moment to moment in the eternal now with no past and no future. So they are spared the guilt and the anxiety that so torment human beings and
We are both person and nature, and the nature itself is also dual, being a synthesis of visible and invisible, each pervading and containing the other. Through the body, we participate in the material and living world; by means of the body, personal existence belongs to the material universe and particularizes it. Cosmic energy is constantly passing through the body, renewing it materially, with the result that the whole of humanity actually possesses a single
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