***
"Poets sing of the miracle of a glance, always unique. Unique as well is the destiny of each person...[T]he personal cross of each person...is inscribed within us at birth. No power can change it. 'Which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life?'
Whether in the heart of a great city or in the depths of a desert, we cannot flee from this personal theme of our life. It accompanies us and speaks to us at every turn in our way. We can respond differently and each time change our course in one direction or another. We can marry or become monks. We can polish lenses, like Spinoza, or repair shoes like Jacob Boehme. The question, our question, remains identical and fixed is us as an integral element of our being. It is no longer a question, it is we ourselves who are called into question.
...God...expects from our faith a vigorous act, the full and conscious acceptance of our destiny. He asks us to assume it freely. No one can do it in our place, even God Himself. The cross is made of our weaknesses and our failings. It is constructed by our enthusiastic impulses and especially by the dark depths of our hearts where a secret resistance and a shameful ugliness lurk, in short, by all that complexity which is at this precise moment, the authentic I.
'Love your neighbor as yourself' allows a certain love of self. It is a call to love our cross. It means perhaps the most difficult act of all--to accept ourselves as we are...
...According to our spiritual teachers, the art of humility does not at all consist in becoming this or that, but of being exactly as God made us...It is our destiny to find the freshness of a passionately loved existence."
Paul Evdokimov Ages of the Spiritual Life
***
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment