Thursday, December
08, 2016
The Solemnity of the
Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Today I would like to continue
our study of the wonderful beginning of the “Book of Consolation,” Isaiah
40-56, working with the text of Chapter 40, verses 1-11.
On Tuesday we meditated on the
first few verses of that chapter with particular attention to the words comfort, tenderness and expiation. Today
I’d like to look at the promises made in verses 4 and 5:
Every valley shall be filled in,
every mountain and hill shall be made low;
The rugged land shall be made a plain,
the rough country, a broad valley.
This is what the promise says to
me, and what it has said to me in the past:
When you come to serve the Lord,
and when you make a conscious decision to give yourself over to the Lord and to
His care and keeping, wondrous things begin to happen. Seemingly insurmountable
barriers begin to be lowered and you can pass over them without an heroic amount
of effort. Small “coincidences” occur in your life that never would otherwise
have occurred if you had not made the commitment to turn your life over to him.
Barriers will be removed, difficulties eased, and you will receive all sorts of
help and support from people, places and things that you had never realized you
could count on before. People who are toxic or dangerous to you will be removed
from your life, and, one by one, habits that you have that go against your
purpose will be dropped and eliminated almost without effort. All you have to
do is to make the commitment and then get out of God’s way so that He can act
in your life.
I have known this to be true in
my own life on a number of occasions, and I have seen it operative in the lives
of others who are close to me. Interestingly enough, the 3rd of the
12-steps for recovery from addiction describes the beginning of the same
process, and many spiritual writers, myself included, have encouraged everyone
to make the process of the 12-steps a part of their own spiritual journey. Here
is the 3rd step in its original language:
Made a decision to turn our will and our
lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
One of the barriers associated
with this step is the image of God that an individual may live with, a
God who is judgmental and punishing, or remote and uncaring. On this, consider
these words of Fr. Thomas Keating: ”This God as revealed by Jesus is forgiving,
gentle, nurturing, caring, motherly, always leaning over to protect us, and
secretly accompanying us in our daily lives. This companionship is available to
everybody the moment they turn to God” (Divine
Therapy and Addiction, p. 45).
Turn to this God today, and
repeat in your heart the same words the Blessed Mother spoke at the
Annunciation: “be it done unto me according to your word.”
May God bless you, and may the
Blessed Mother pray for you throughout this day and the remaining days of
Advent.
No comments:
Post a Comment