Saturday, November 4, 2023
Memorial of Saint Charles Borromeo, Bishop
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Loving God, loving each other
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.
In Cactus Lake, Saskatchewan the temp dropped last night to 24 degrees. In mid-winter the night temperature might get down to 24 below. The Rolheiser farm, where Ron grew up, required chores before and after school from the Rolheiser kids. His parents appreciated their children; “Dad was the moral compass, Mom was the heart.” By the time they had died, “they had given us all they needed to live with some buoyancy and joy.”
Since 1966 Ron has been one of the Catholic church’s “religious.” He also has been one of its more adventurous theologians, exploring the edges of what the people of his church believe. As he felt about his parents, so he thinks about his God. God provides all we need to live with joy and thanksgiving.
But.
Do we ever view God as relaxed, content, pleased with us, and pleased in fact with the world? That he takes delight in us and in the world?
No. Not much.
Often we see God as a workaholic, overly-intense, wired, displeased, and semi-neurotic.
Like us.
Consciously or unconsciously, we believe that God’s first mode of interpretation, when seeing us and the world, is that of depreciation rather than appreciation.
My first thought is usually critical, although I’ve learned to edit that first thought and stick with the second one.
Before we see what is good, we see what is wrong; before we appreciate, we judge; before we are pleased, we are disappointed; before we bless, we curse; and before there is joy, there is anger.
We are wrong when we do this. And we are also wrong when think God is doing this too. When God called what he had made “very good,” he meant it. He will always mean it.
Long before there is any judgment on this planet or on any of us, God is saying: “It is good. You are my beloved child in whom I am well-pleased!” God is smiling, relaxed, and not neurotic.
It might take us a whole life to reach this point of belief about God, or about ourselves.
Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.
It’s OK. There’s no hurry. What else could life be for?
(Romans 11, Psalm 94, Matthew 11, Luke 14)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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