Always, We Begin Again!

Benedicamus Domino!

This is the first anniversary of the day on which I began this blog. Though its seeds were planted elseware on the net, it was not begun in earnest until April 11, 2012. I'm not going to do a year in review, as I already did something of the kind at New Years, but I will reflect a little bit on the last year and whether my journey has indeed taken me anywhere.

I began this blog as a way to define for myself what it is to live authentically, to live more for eternal things than for those things which are fleeting in this world, but what I've come to realize during this last year is that it's fine to embrace the transitory so long as we know that it is transitory and fully acknowledge this. The catch is that our whole culture is based on trying to live as though the things which do not last in this world should last, and if they don't, we're somehow doing something wrong or should do something right to make them last. This isn't far from certain ancient faiths which involved doing rituals and propitiating gods or ancestral spirits to ensure fertile crops or healthy children. I suppose we will always make these equasions in our minds: if I do X just right, I'll get Y. However, the danger here is trying to make something mortal into something eternal by sheer effort of will or by following fads which promise much but deliver very little.

The fact is that we live in a world that is filled with death--with decay. However, in the midst of this tendency to decay or to run down, the universe gives us brilliant signs of life, of life deeper than what our senses can perceive, though even that life is pretty amazing to contemplate! And as a Christian, I believe that Christ's incarnation, death and resurrection has actually reversed this principle of decay, or has shown us how to leave it behind in favour of the life that is in Him. And what is this path? It is summed up in the words of Mary at her Annunciation: "Behold the handmaid (servant) of the Lord! Be it unto me according to thy word!" Gabriel gave her a message which she could hardly credit, but although she questioned him about it, in the end, she said: "So be it. I won't oppose this. I won't stand in the way of this strange and somewhat frightening thing." This is what we have to do. We have to learn to listen for God in our lives and then to say: "Amen!" This is how the thief on the cross repented. It was in a single moment as he was being punnished for admitted crimes.

God quite simply wants to dwell within us and to change us from the inside out, and we're really the only obstacle in His way. We have spent ages as a race building walls, temples, altars to ourselves. We have sacrificed others on those altars, stepping on them to cause our own stars to rise higher and higher. Unfortunately, what we call stars are only mere candles or sparks in comparison to the light which God gives to us, and they burn out all too soon, but while they burn, they set others on fire and cause conflagrations which destroy whole civilizations and perhaps worse, sometimes even individual souls.

The problem is that these sparkes are untamed. They blow around on the winds of change and chance, but we have the ability to change this. We have the agency in our universe to still our little spark and to fuel it with God's flame. It will steady us and cause our destructive sparks of fallen life to be changed into true stars, true suns around which others will orbit. But first, we have to allow what we think is our life to be killed. We must stop building the temple to the self, must stop constructing the wall of ego and passion. God's fire is ten million times more consuming than our little feeble spark. It will, if we give it the chance, burn down the walls separating us from Him, and it will transmute us, will lessen the death that is in us and give us new life. The wheat must be buried in order to come to life! The ego must be burned away for the God-created self to emerge and to flourish in the light of day.

This, in the last analysis, is what living for joy for me is about. I seek God's joy, God's life, because quite simply, without Him, I'm dead. I must learn to be grateful for every day I'm given and to make each of those days an offering in return, to say with Mary every day: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord! Be it unto me according to Thy word!" Of course, Rome wasn't built in a day. I cann't be like the thief on the cross. My spirit would do it! Perhaps even my heart would do it, but there is still the wall, still the ego to deal with and to oppose. As St. Benedict says: "Always, we begin again." Always, we're being shown how far we have to go, but this should not be a cause for despair. It should fill us with happiness. We should be filled with joy, because once we know there's a wall, we can learn to stop building it higher and we can let God's all-consuming fire work on us, for though it destroys, it also gives life and causes our little spark of soul to be blown into a true and steady flame of love and mercy. This is what we do it all for: to become more loving, more charitable, more merciful, more truly human than we can be on our own and in our fallen state.

This year has been intense for me. Have all my goals been met? Not yet. Have I learned much? Definitely, and the best part is that the journey isn't over yet! It will never end unless I end it. I will never stop growing unless I kill it. I intend to let it grow, even if it means admitting hard truths. God, Christ, what He wants to make humanity and the whole universe is more than worth a little difficulty on my part! So, onward I go, wherever my path leads me!

Deo Gratias!