Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Saying yes to wholeness

It has been an exhausting couple of weeks helping out at the five-day Pastoral Care Course entitled Empowering the Wounded Healer that just ended two Sundays ago as well as being involved in an earlier weekend retreat for Church of The Nativity of The Blessed Virgin Mary and an afternoon talk by Pia Attard entitled In Search of the Beloved.

There are so many things that have touched my heart - from lessons relearned to new discoveries. I am humbled and awed at just how God works and moves in mysterious and wonderful ways, not just in the lives of others, but in my own life. Truly the more one serves, the more graces one receives.

Perhaps the most important reminder for me this August is that saying yes to Jesus requires a lifetime of repeating the same response with fresh heart every day, something that somehow doesn't get easier with time.

My yes occasionally requires my willing to go the way I know I should even when my heart isn't in it: when I am feeling uncomfortably stretched beyond my limits, when I am most afraid to come out of my comfort zone, and especially when I am drooping and bone weary.

I like P's simple approach on how to say yes in tough circumstances. First, accept the situation for what it is. Then, look at the big picture (this also requires you to know who you are and where you want to go). Finally, respond by making the best out of the situation. Cut through all the dodgy rationalizations, the unreliable, seesawing emotions, plus the conditions that ego and pride place on things. Cut out all the complaining, griping and inner trash talk. Do what's right by God and by others even if it comes at great personal sacrifice that may not make sense at the time.

So when I wish to flee the scene, I am invited to make the best of it by standing my ground. And instead of bewailing the situation and allowing it to drain me, to look at it with a fresh set of eyes. Really grin, not just grit my teeth, and bear it. Bear it with good grace such that I eventually begin to see the merits of the situation. Did Saint Paul not say love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things?

Pia Attard quoted a line from Thomas Merton's Seed of Contemplation that is both profound and inspiring: There is a hidden wholeness in everything.

She encouraged PCC participants to live out a spirituality of imperfection for we are all called to wholeness and not perfection as the world sees it. Saint Paul proclaimed God's power is made perfect in our weakness, thus God's grace alone is sufficient.

It is only in my weakness that I seek for God strength.

It is only in my poverty that I seek for His richness.

It is only in my sin, that I seek for the Lord's mercy.

It is only in the seeking that I open my heart to receiving divine graces, and I open the door to wholeness, a wholeness that reveals the incredible beauty of Christ's suffering face in His redemptive act of love.

I, too, then, can be an instrument of redemptive grace and inject unimaginable richness in my life through my yes. It doesn't require me to be perfect, just to be honest with myself, vulnerable, and open to following Jesus.

In attempting to weather the hard blows and difficult life situations with the grace Jesus did in His life, the hidden wholeness will surface slowly, but surely. And even if it doesn't, I know it is there, and that, in itself, is enough. Therefore I need to continuously undergo kenosis, the self-emptying of my own will in order to receive His divine will, thereby enabling a constant flow of metanoia, a transformative change of heart.

Pia shared Saint Bernard of Claivaux's four degrees of love that we all, I believe, experience concomitantly even as we aspire to live out the fourth degree most fully:

1. Loving yourself for your own sake.
2. Loving God for your own sake.
3. Loving God for God's sake.
4. Loving yourself for God's sake.

When I can receive and wholly embody the love the Father has for me, then I am able to love myself as He loves me. Secure in my 'belovedness', I can mature into the being He created me to be. My brokenness can also be the space where He enters to bring wholeness to others. I just have to say yes to it, a wholeness that may remain hidden.

Our yeses power our actions of daily living, whether we are faithful to what we believe in, and whether we are able to rise above our own personal fears to act with integrity consistently. So make it a good resounding yes today. 

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