The Hebrew word Messiah means “anointed.” It symbolizes a sense of being consecrated or made holy. For those who believe in God, the most ultimate way to be made holy is when one is completely embraced in God. For example, when your entire body is fully immersed in purified water, there’s not a single part of your body that isn’t touched by that clean water. This image reminds us of the sacrament of holy baptism in which our entire selves die and are risen. This ritual of baptism in our Anglican tradition has one more thing other than this image of our entire selves being immersed in holy water.
Can you guess what it is? It’s on page 308 in the Book of Common Prayer where it says in italics, “Then the Bishop or Priest places a hand on the person's head, marking on the forehead the sign of the cross [using Chrism if desired] and saying to each one, ‘N., you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ's own for ever. Amen.’” There’s this rich image of being “anointed” or Christened. As Jesus is considered “anointed,” we too are anointed through the sacrament of baptism in which we are entirely embraced by God and thus are made holy. This doesn’t mean we’re holy. We are made holy by God’s grace in our union with God. We become sanctified as we’re one with God. In this union with God, we forget ourselves. We lose a sense of ego-consciousness by which we feel, think, perceive, analyze things, and protect ourselves, etc. We face our naked selves in our oneness with God that there’s nothing else but God’s very own. I imagine this is where Jesus comes from as he heads to Jerusalem where he would be murdered by the power that be. Peter represents the one who is not yet in union with God that his sense of ego dominates his way of thinking, feeling, willing, and living. So, Peter who was once praised by Jesus in the gospel lesson last Sunday is now called “Satan” by the same person in today’s gospel lesson. “Get behind me, Satan!” Whether Jesus really thinks Peter is Satan or not is not that important. I see this rebuking word of Jesus as his own way of reminding himself of the eternal union with God. It’s more like “See what matters the most!” or “Get it right!” or “Do the right thing in God’s eyes!” Don’t let anything disturb this union with God. Act from there. Then, Jesus goes straight into setting one’s mind on divine things, not on human things. And to set our mind on divine things, all we gotta do is to take up our cross, which is our own selves. Think about how often we ourselves are the ones getting in the way of reaching out to people in kindness or compassion. We become our own obstacles to join God’s mission. Jesus specifically says, “Take UP your cross” first and follow him. The cross we need to carry is ourselves that are in the way to follow Jesus. We need to take ourselves up, to get them out of the way first. It’s like a stage performer suffering from stage fright that one cannot do anything, being too much focused on oneself. To reduce one’s stage fright is to shift the focus from oneself. For us, we’re to shift our focus from ourselves to God that we are no longer an obstacle to ourselves. This act of taking up the cross can never be done on our own but is only possible when we’re one with God in which we lose and forget ourselves. Only in our union with God, we can take up our own selves and follow the way of Jesus because our minds are set on God in our oneness with God. In this union with God, we lose ourselves. Jesus says, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” We enter the cloud of forgetting ourselves, yet in truth we gain what we truly are. We might be terrified even to imagine losing ourselves, yet in truth we gain more than ourselves. What we gain in losing ourselves is nothing but the resurrected life. During this pandemic, what part of you is in your way to follow Jesus? See what’s getting in your way of love and accept as it is without judgment. Everybody has a part of themselves that always gets in the way to love others as themselves (therefore more than themselves!). While we’re not able to socialize in person, this time may be used as the time to transform isolation to solitude where we become more aware of our eternal oneness with God as God’s Christened. Amen. Today’s gospel lesson reveals the most human side of Jesus that he can be wrong. As a matter of fact, he is wrong about his way of treating the Canaanite woman despite his sociocultural context. Yet, not only does his freedom and ability to err make him human, but also his openness to learn from the gentile woman and his own mistake truly makes him more human. So two human sides of Jesus we see in today’s gospel lesson are 1) he is wrong and 2) he learns. The second aspect is something I would like to reflect on. What does he learn from the Canaanite woman?
There are three layers of social discrimination against the woman in the story. The first was done by Jesus’ disciples who cannot stand the woman’s desperate request for help. They ask Jesus to send her away. Jesus who usually doesn’t listen to them strangely listens to their request this time. He doesn’t tell the woman to go away but makes clear that he is sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. She doesn’t make the cut. In a way, she is lost but her Canaanite identity is the problem. Two requirements that one must meet to get Jesus’ help are being lost and Jewish. As the woman continues to ask for help, Jesus indirectly calls her a dog (more of a puppy) to send her away. Hence, three reasons for discrimination against her are 1) being loud, 2) being gentile, and 3) being almost like a puppy. We can see that this pattern of discrimination in our human history still repeats. It may be shocking even to think that Jesus can be wrong and is wrong. What should be more strikingly provocative, however, is how the Canaanite woman responds to him. At first, we might think the woman is simply begging for Jesus’ help. She doesn’t care what he says and how he treats her as long as she can get him to heal her daughter out of her motherly love. I don’t think this is an incorrect interpretation but it places the woman in a very passive role of women that our patriarchal society has been defining: virtuous women are foremost wives and mothers, or nuns if unmarried. (quite medieval!) From a spiritual point of view, I would like to consider that her act of responding to Jesus’ discriminatory words and rudeness comes from her spirituality of emptiness. From the beginning, she is self-less. She’s empty of herself, her ego. She’s fearless that she shouts at Jesus for help. It doesn’t matter if this Jesus guy is surrounded by twelve tough looking guys. There’s no sense of self that can get her caught up in feeling intimidated by their presence. She gets shut down but persists. This Jesus guy who is able to perform healing miracles disqualifies her for being gentile. She again persists and shouts, “Help me.” Here, this “me” no longer exists. That ego is completely burnt away for the sake of the other. She’s already self-less. There’s no shame in her persistent act of asking for help. The one who is self-less is the strongest and the most resilient. There’s nothing and no one to lose in this game of no-self. So she freely becomes a dog, a puppy. Not only she who has no self willingly takes the role of a puppy but seeks for the crumbs falling from that Jewish table. I often wonder what wisdom Jesus takes away from this selfless woman and his own mistake. I want to imagine that he learns how to empty himself and how to be a mother from her. His encounter with the woman who is self-less is like interacting with water. Water is versatile. There’s no obstacle that can stop water from flowing, flowing to the left or right, over or under. I’m reminded of Bruce Lee’s saying as I reflect on the woman: “You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water, my friend.” The woman never gets tangled up in herself or her ego. Her spirituality of emptiness is like being water to everything for the sake of love for the other. Jesus seems to take this wisdom to his heart and embodies as he takes up his own cross on which he’s crucified for the sake of love. As he would quote the latter part of Psalm 22 on the cross, “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast” (Psalm 22:14), (not just the first part of “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me…”) he becomes empty of himself. He gives his entire self to others for love and compassion. As Jesus becomes selfless like the woman, he knows how to gather the crumbs falling from the table. He, like a nurturing mother, feeds his children with the crumbs he gathers. This crumb is for us the mustard seed. It’s the yeast. It’s the kingdom of heaven that he feeds us with at the Eucharist. When Jesus tells the woman, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish,” this faith of the woman is what heals her daughter. Jesus simply affirms her selfless faith. What kind of faith is this? This is the faith that is completely empty of self. It is the radical act of letting go of oneself. How do we do this? We cannot let go of anything if there’s nothing to hold on to. We can let go of things, especially our own selves when there’s something greater than us. That something is our experience of being in union with God. In this union, we can lose ourselves because this mystical annihilation is the way to be one with God. The more we lose our fixated ego, the deeper we are aware of God’s presence in us and the greater we become conscious of our eternal oneness with God. Selfless love is possible if and only if there’s no self. Amen. There’s a religious joke I often share with my colleagues from environmental services at the hospital where I work. This can be a corny joke but my colleagues are kind enough to put a smile on their faces every time I say the same joke. It’s when they mop the floor of the patient room I would like to visit and the floor is still wet. I say, “I’m not Jesus. I can’t walk on the water. I’ll wait until it dries.” My intention, of course, is not to leave my footprints on the clean floor. My colleagues would have to mop it again.
For this reason, today’s gospel lesson feels very familiar to me personally. I think Peter is much more courageous than me that he’s got guts to ask, “If it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” If I were Peter, I would rather ask, “If it is you, where do I live? Tell me my birthday. What’s my son’s name? Tell me which soccer team I like, and etc.” Well, Peter gets what he asks for. He gets out of the boat and starts walking on the water. He finally comes toward Jesus. At this point, it looks like the only requirement to walk on the water is courage to boldly ask if Jesus can help walk on the water and to get out of the boat. Courage is what gets Peter’s leap of faith started. But there’s a problem. As the strong wind blows, Peter panics and sinks. We might say his courage is not strong enough. Jesus even says to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” This doubt is more of Peter’s forgetfulness that Jesus is with him and enables him to walk on the water. Once Peter’s focus is shifted from Jesus to the strong wind and then to himself, his instinct for survival immediately activates. Then comes his fear of death that sinks closer to death. We now can see that Peter’s forgetfulness of Jesus’ presence due to the strong wind, which Jesus calls “doubt,” is his concern for his own life. When he’s only focused on himself, doubt is born and courage disappears. St. Ambrose once said, “Fortitude must not trust itself.” In other words, self-centeredness creates doubt, not just doubt about others but about ourselves. When we are more aware of ourselves than of our oneness with God, we become doubtful of ourselves and others. In this deep oneness with God can we only walk on the water. When Peter’s focus is solely on Jesus, there’s this oneness between them. Negligently disconnecting ourselves from God’s union with us by being too concerned with ourselves out of fear and anxiety, (by which we also disconnect ourselves from others) we sink in. This, however, does not mean we should always continue to keep our focus on our union with God all the time. This is unrealistic and impossible. We are human beings who are born to err. In this sense, I’m actually glad that Peter sank. I’m encouraged that Peter is of little faith. I feel relieved he had doubt. Because I would’ve done the same as Peter. Just like Peter, I would be scared of the strong wind blowing at me. Yet, what comforts me more than Peter’s mistake is Jesus. As soon as Peter starts sinking in, he immediately reaches out his hand and catches Peter. For this matter, I have enough faith to be scared of the strong wind because I know God never ceases to reach out to us, to reconnect with us, to hold us from sinking. This indeed is the good news. The kingdom of God is always within us. That is, God’s eternal presence is always within us. Jesus’ reaching out his hand to Peter symbolizes we’re in God’s hands. The strong wind is still blowing at us. Up until now, we have been courageously and faithfully walking on the water despite the strong wind as we keep our focus on God’s eternal oneness with us, “God with us Emmanuel.” It’s my fervent prayer for all of us that we continue to do so. But even if we become afraid of a stronger wind of fighting for justice and peace or dealing with personal issues and sink in, may we take that as a grace-filled opportunity to be caught by God’s loving hands and be in the union with God once again and forever more. Amen. Jesus is always driven by compassion. His only motivation for whatever he does is compassion for others. A 20th century saint and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer described Jesus as the “man for others.” I would like us to seriously reflect on how Jesus was able to give himself for others to the point of death. This sacrificial compassion of Jesus is countercultural, considering how much our society puts so much emphasis on self-care. This 33 years old man completely committed himself to the mission of God. How was he able to do that? One can only give one’s entire self to someone when one’s self or ego no longer gets in the way. From a mystical perspective, Jesus’ entire being was embraced in the Triune God to the point he totally lost himself in his union with the Godhead. When this complete oneness with God takes place, one’s ego no longer is an obstacle but becomes a means to love others as oneself. There’s no concern for self-preservation.
In today’s gospel lesson, we see Jesus being filled with compassion. He teaches the crowd that even follows to a deserted place and cures the sick. His disciples are also there. They do their duty to be realistic and to keep Jesus on track. It’s getting late and these people must go back to their villages and feed themselves. I bet the disciples also want to start moving back to the town and eat something. Jesus probably knows the intention of the disciples which serves two purposes. One is for the crowd, and the other for themselves. It’s like “Let’s wrap it up, Jesus. It’s late. We’re hungry. The crowd must be hungry too.” Jesus doesn’t back off. He goes right back at them. “You give them something to eat.” If you ponder on his saying, it’s quite absurd for him to say that. The disciples never attract the crowd. It’s always Jesus who draws all these people, even to a deserted place. He should be the one who should give them something to eat. But in saying so, Jesus turns the disciples’ focus on the crowd. When the disciples are about to lose the sight of their true mission, Jesus gets them back on why they do what they do. They are not only to liberate people from oppression but also to feed them. The disciples don’t back down. They say, “We’ve only got the five loaves and the two fish.” I always find it interesting that they actually count how many they have. This to me sounds like they’re pretty frustrated with Jesus and might be passive-aggressive. “This is exactly how many we have, and you want us to do what?” Despite little they have, Jesus doesn’t seem to mind and says, “Bring them to me.” Then we see his sacred action with which we’re very familiar. “He took the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.” Our Eucharistic action is based on this sacred action of Jesus. There are at least two things we can take away from today’s gospel lesson. One is where to find the source of compassion. In his entire ministry, Jesus’ compassion always comes from his union with God where he becomes empty of his ego and becomes filled with God. The other take-away is that our Eucharistic action which must be driven by this compassion serves those in need. Our Eucharistic life must reflect on the feeding miracle of Jesus. This is one of the main reasons why our food pantry ministry is so crucial to the mission of Saint Agnes Church. It is the most visible and biblical symbol of the Eucharist we partake every Sunday (though we haven’t been able to since mid-March!). It seems our world isn’t getting any better. Coronavirus is still out of control. Our nation suffers and bleeds from the original sin of racism. People are losing their jobs and health benefits. We have every reason not to be compassionate to others. But here we are, still feeding our neighbors, praying for them, checking in with one another in creative ways, and caring for one another. We might not have enough compassion to feed the five thousand but as long as we have it and bring it to our God. God will do the work. All we gotta do is to look around us and see who is in need. The church might not make a noticeable impact on social changes but we do it locally and secretly as the kingdom of God like a small mustard seed is hidden yet becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches. Amen. If we can recall the actual content of Jesus’s gospel, the good news he proclaimed, it’s all about the kingdom of God. If someone who is not from the Christian tradition asks us, “What’s this gospel your religion is talking about?” I would like us to be well prepared to respond to this fundamental question. Please don’t say, “If you don’t believe in Jesus, you’re not going to hell.” which I doubt anyone of you will ever. If we encounter a brilliant and ethically superior atheist, s/he might ask us, “Since you believe in Jesus, will you be in heaven?” “Yes,” we would respond, then I’m afraid if s/he would say, “Then I’d rather want to be in hell!” ;)
Now, the answer to this question according to the gospel accounts, especially that of St. Matthew, is this: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (Matthew 3:2 & 4:17) It’s not so dogmatic or threatening but rather informative and urgent. Maybe it’s just me but I can imagine Jesus urging us, “My friends, hurry up! It’s near! It’s near! Let’s get on it right now!” In this context, to repent is neither to feel guilty of what we have done nor to feel ashamed of who we are. This type of understanding repentance is toxic and harmful which does nothing to transform us. What Jesus means by repentance is to turn around, to change our entire perspective on everything with a sense of urgency. You probably remember St. Francis of Assisi’s way of looking at the world upside down. To have this upside-down perspective is to repent. So, for anyone to see the kingdom of heaven, one needs to repent. One must radically change the way one looks at things, people, the world, self, and God. In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus lays out six parables. At first, it looks like there are five parables, but he gives another parable in the last verse 52. All these parables are about the kingdom of heaven. It’s simply a riddle that doesn’t make sense if we do not change the way we think of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus here doesn’t mean the kingdom of heaven as a place where we go after we die, which I’ve repeatedly mentioned in all my homilies that discuss this subject matter of the kingdom of heaven. Again, I assure you it’s not about the afterlife. Jesus isn’t so interested in it at all. All that matters to us is right now and right here on earth. If I may quote John Lewis’ famous saying, “If not now, then when? If not us, then who?” And I’ll add, “If not here, then where?” The kingdom of heaven according to Jesus is here and now among us and within us. Unless we repent, the kingdom of heaven is just near to us. There’s a difference between the kingdom within and among us and the kingdom near to us. In the latter case, we’re really not in it. We see it but we’re not quite there just yet unless we are radically transformed. To clarify this kingdom talk, some have criticized its term being too imperialistic or patriarchal. This is a valid point. The kingdom language may have intrigued colonialism. The kingdom has never been talked about as the “queen”dom. Some scholars suggest the term “kin”dom in which all of us are sisters and brothers in Christ. I personally prefer the “eternal presence of God” or “God’s eternal oneness with humanity.” But for the sake of convenience and familiarity, I’ll simply use the traditional expression, the kingdom. There’s a common thread in all these six parables of the kingdom of heaven that it is hidden. It’s not easily found or seen. What it tells us is that the nature of this kingdom Jesus talks about is experiential. The kingdom of heaven is not something to be thought of or discussed or analyzed intellectually but first and foremost to be experienced in us. What then is to be experienced? It’s the very presence of God’s oneness with us. That is the kingdom of heaven. This past Sunday during our zoom meeting, I briefly talked about the experience of being one with what we do. When we enjoy the moment of dancing so much to the point we lose ourselves, we become the dance itself. There’s no distinction. There’s this oneness between the dancer and dancing. This oneness becomes the dance itself. The kingdom of heaven as God’s presence in us is this oneness between God and us. The presence of God in its very nature is beyond time and space, death and life. There has never been a time when God wasn’t present. The problem is our spiritual ignorance that we are not aware of God’s presence. In this sense, the kingdom of heaven, the presence of God is like a tiny mustard seed, yeast mixed in flour, a treasure hidden in a field, one pearl of great value, a net that was thrown into the sea but was not yet pulled out of the sea, the master of a household who hasn’t yet brought out of his treasure what is new and what is old. Until we notice it, we simply pass by. Until we are aware of it, we do not know it exists. Until we experience it, we don’t sense God’s presence in us and others. Where in your daily life do you experience the presence of God? This presence of God is not something abstract but experiential, real, and concrete. It’s too big of a matter that we cannot just let theologians or clergy talk about it all the time. This language of God’s presence should be our own, and it has to come from our own experience with God in us. Let me give you some examples when you might have experienced God’s presence yet would not have yet thought of it as it is. When our minds are calm, that is, when our minds are not busy with thoughts and feelings, we experience a sense of peace, calmness, and serenity. Why on earth should we feel that, unless we’re in the presence of God? What I mean by the cessation of thoughts and feelings is when our mind is focused on one thing (e.g. dancing) or when our mind literally stops its activities. When all the obstacles that the monkey mind creates are cleared, we see God’s presence that has never been absent and has been there all the time in our lives. As we gaze upon God’s presence, we’re already embraced in God, becoming one with God and realizing we’ve been embraced in God’s love ever since we were born. Our prayer life must involve this experience of God’s presence. In this divine presence, we experience what we received in our baptism. We’re constantly purified and sanctified. In a way, we’re deified or divinized solely due to the presence of God in which we’re one with Godhead. (This aspect of God’s work in the sacraments is described as “efficacious.”) Thus, we can confess, “Heavenly Father, in you we live and move and have our being.” This life that is aware and conscious of the kingdom of heaven, of God’s presence, and of God’s oneness with us transform all the faculties of our minds. We’re to think, feel, and act differently according to the very presence of God in us and others. Once we see God in us, we see God in others even if they are not aware of it. We are given the eyes that can see the best of each person even if that person is known to be unlikeable. Jesus had the eyes of God’s unconditional love. Our world now needs those with the eyes of love more than ever. As St. Teresa of Avila famously said, “Yours are the eyes through which Jesus looks compassion on this world.” Amen. Reflecting on the parable of Jesus in today’s gospel lesson, it is quite tempting to think that there’s a clear line between good and evil people. We may focus on “Who is going to be thrown into the furnace of fire?” This question can easily become “Who will be burnt in hell?” This is a naive understanding of good and evil. As I half-jokingly mentioned my favorite saying of Jesus, “wise as serpents and innocent as doves in the midst of wolves,” we need to be wise to get the nature of good and evil.
I may have in the past quoted Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s saying in one of my homilies regarding good and evil. I think it’s worth mentioning again: “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Looking deep inside our hearts, we see both good and evil are tangled up. We experience ourselves doing something kind for others at times and doing something unkind at another. St Paul himself seems to struggle with growing the wheat and the weeds together in him. He agonizes, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” (Romans 7:15) This internal struggle is not just moral but essentially spiritual in its nature. It is something we all struggle with and don’t really understand why our minds are so fractured. We so desire to do good but do the very thing we hate. Our attempt to get rid of the evil inside us usually fails. Since both good and evil are already part of us, our attack on evil can turn into self-hatred, creating unnecessary guilt and toxic shame. This self-hatred can then turn into depression. You cannot beat yourself up too long. Jesus thinks our spiritual struggle is caused by the devil. Since we are so influenced by the images of the devil depicted by Hollywood movies, we might immediately imagine the devil with two horns sowing weeds among wheat at night. Well, that actually didn’t happen. No devil would look like that and do that. We can, of course, personify our created image of the devil but that’s still imagined, not real. One of the more helpful ways to understand the devil is to look at the word itself. The word “devil” originated from the Greek term, “diabolos” whose literal meaning is the one who divides. Whatever divides our mind is in us. Whatever divides our minds also divides our relationship with one another and our world. Grab any newspaper. It is filled with social divisions and fractions that are already happening in our minds. That’s it. It’s part of our human nature which we must accept. In the parable, this division happens when everyone is asleep. No one knows when this division has begun. Instead of trying to demonize our human nature of dividing and discriminating things and to fix it, we want to focus on two aspects in the parable of the sower: 1) Someone already sowed the good seed before the devil came at night and sowed weeds and 2) let both the wheat and the weed grow together until the harvest. 1) Before whatever starts dividing our minds, which means before any evil comes to our minds and our way of judging one from the other to be good or evil takes place, let’s keep in mind that good seeds are already sown in our hearts. We already have something good, something divine, something godly in us before we judge good and evil. This goodness already planted in our hearts is not the opposite of evil. We don’t begin from something completely vacant and void but with God’s goodness that is in and of itself perfect. (Please note that it is not our perfection but God’s!) This divine goodness goes beyond our perception of good and evil in a moral sense. This special goodness should be considered more as the very source of love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness. This is why Jesus the sower of the good seed committed his entire life to preaching this type of God’s goodness rather than rigid moral rules that the Pharisees were all about. To put it more simply, God’s goodness is not equivalent to our understanding of moral goodness. It has the power to embrace both good and evil and transform evil into something beautiful because nothing evil or corrupt can exist in the goodness of God. 2) Waiting for both the wheat and the weeds to grow until the harvest can sound like we can do whatever evil we want to do since the good seed, the goodness of God is already planted in our hearts. Well, you know it just doesn’t sound right. The point of the parable is never to allow us to indulge but to pay attention to the harvest time. This harvest time can be traditionally interpreted as the day of judgment that the weeds will be thrown into the furnace of fire. I would rather look at this differently this time that every night we end our day can be seen as the harvest day. Monastics consider their sleep as a symbol of death and understand “Compline” (which means the completion of the day from the Latin term completorium or the night prayer) as a prayer for a happy death. It’s countercultural and striking that the blessing from this Compline directly mentions death: “May Almighty God grant us a restful night and a happy death.” This time of compline before we go to bed in a symbolic sense is the harvest time for us. At this harvest time, we contemplate on the goodness of God. We let the living flame of God burn the weeds, whatever evil thoughts, volitions, behaviors, and words I had throughout the day. Rather than judging myself, gaze upon the goodness of God and let our naked being seen by God whose love can purify our hearts. As I invite all of us to see the good seed is already planted in your hearts and every night is the harvest time, St John of the Cross shares with us how we can start harvesting: “I abandoned and forgot myself, laying my face on my Beloved; all things ceased; I went out from myself, leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.” (The Dark Night of the Soul, #8) |
Paul"...life up your love to that cloud [of unknowing]...let God draw your love up to that cloud...through the help of his grace, to forget every other thing." Archives
January 2025
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