The relationship between faith and the Law seems to be dichotomized in St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Faith sets us free where the Law enslaves us. Yet, this doesn’t mean there’s no need for the Law. Jesus abolished the Law, not by denying its necessity but by completing and fulfilling the Law. Think of the Law or rules as signposts to help us arrive at a destination. Let’s think about building IKEA furniture. We first need instructions to build a bookcase. We will try to follow each step to make sure it’s built correctly as directed in the instruction written with tiny letters. Once we succeed in putting things together, we don’t need to go back to the instruction for the second one. We become more skillful. The rules are like this instruction. Once we master, we embody the rules that become our second nature.
The Ten Commandments are like these IKEA instructions. We are building (and rebuilding) the human being created in the image of God according to divine instructions which can be found in the life of Jesus with the help of the Holy Spirit. As we know, this instruction of the Ten Commandments is filled with “Thou shall not.” The Ten Commandments in a way presuppose what we can do. It presumes our tendencies to harm others. We can idolize, murder, steal, lie, and covet. We also have the potential to not honor our parents and live our lives restlessly and mindlessly being addicted to the life driven by a falsely fabricated version of self. The Ten Commandments suggest that we don’t know how to live our lives according to God’s will. We can’t and don’t know what it’s like to live fully if we’re not aware of ourselves in the most honest sense. The human state that the Ten Commandments presuppose and prescribe is the state of self-centeredness, the state of me-and-mine. This state limits our relationships with others. The only expansion of this me-and-mine state in terms of relationships is one’s own family but when one of the family members turns out to be a black sheep, that member is out. How often do we see blood is not so thicker than water in reality? In this state, we have no ability to see “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as in heaven.” So the Law is helpful to keep everyone in order. The rules are the boundaries that protect one another. But the downside of just keeping the rules is that it’s not motivated by freedom. We don’t feel like we willingly choose to keep them but we simply have to. When we’re forced to do things, there comes a temptation to break them. This rebellious retaliation is not just something bad but maybe a symptom of our freedom being suppressed. Its target is not merely to break the rules but to express one’s freedom in the most obvious and apparent way. What can be the most freeing behavior in a situation where we are coerced to be deadly quiet? Shout our lungs out! Our desire to be free would be expressed in the most rebellious way. In Jesus’ eyes, keeping the rules without spiritual awakening can never be a good approach to live harmoniously. This is why he is critical of the local religious authorities in his time who are overly legalistic in their teachings. The Ten Commandments are to teach us the human traits driven by selfishness. We are to accept its prescription of the current human state that we all somehow have desires to commit what the Ten Commandments prohibit. (This doesn’t mean we’ll actually commit them!) We candidly and humbly see them in ourselves by heart in contemplation. Doing this in contemplation matters because this is a way to see ourselves in the loving and compassionate presence of God. We have a choice to examine our selfish nature without contemplation but we may end up with self-hatred since there’s no way out of it on our own. Gazing at how our egoistic desires fabricate who we are in the light of God’s unconditional love in our act of contemplation, we encounter the Spirit in our hearts. St. Paul expresses, “...God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” Deep in our hearts, we face the Great Mystery, the Ultimate Reality that is uncontainable and inexpressible in a word. This holy encounter is the first step before we blindly attempt to follow the rules. So we want to be skillful in our human encounter with the divine so that we become much more mindful of God’s presence everywhere and every moment. A Christian understanding of mindfulness is to keep in mind God’s presence, recalling the commandment of Jesus, “Do this in remembrance of me.” This in contemplation is to transform the bread of our egoistic desires to the Body of Christ for the sake of the world. In doing so, the rules are really the instructions or signposts that help us build our community more ethically and more compassionately. In the union with God, there’s nothing to fix or do but gratefully be and love. What’s freer than this? This evening, we celebrate the coming of Jesus. The reality he symbolizes is the union between God and humanity. When we look at this sacrament, this symbol in Jesus, we see God uniting the entire humanity to God’s very own self. The image of that which is conceived of the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary captures God coming and dwelling in our midst, Emmanuel. This reality of our union with God is in and of itself God’s salvation. In the presence of God, all our brokenness is restored and healed.
That we are at-onement with God is initiated by God in the same way that we are created by God alone. We don’t make God available. We can certainly make a god available for our own sakes. Rather, God faithfully and perpetually makes God’s own self available for us so that God’s presence can be found in us. The kingdom of God dwelling in us, which is the good news Jesus proclaims, is the message of Emmanuel as well. The Christmas message is not different from the gospel message of Jesus. There’s one more grace of God we can merrily celebrate through breathing. This one is experiential in its nature that we see the coming of God dwelling within our bodies. St. Paul in his letter to Titus sees the Holy Spirit being poured out on us richly through Jesus. From a contemplative perspective, we are to experience the presence of the Holy Spirit in meditation, particularly through breathing. Jesus’ breath is not different from our breath. It’s the same breath that we breathe. It’s the same Holy Spirit breathing into our bodies. Imagining that our breath is the same as Jesus’, we can enter into a deep sense of communion with him. This communion through breathing is also the way to experience God in a trinitarian way. Our human body that stands in the place of Son connects with the Holy Spirit through breathing in the presence of the Father. Our body is then the locus where God happens, the locus of Emmanuel, God with us. When we are able to sense the depth of this holy communion with God with our bodies through our own breathing, there comes a radically different yet once hidden reality in which the Holy Spirit links you and me, us and Jesus, all of us and the world in the Holy Trinity. This is how we can experience God in the most fundamental and natural way. I would like to suggest that sharing this contemplative experience with your loved ones can be a special Christmas gift. It’s not costly but takes courage for us even to give it a try! I have a beautiful story that can convince us why this can be a special gift. This is the story shared on NPR recently The last time Carolyn DeFord, a member of the Puyallup tribe, saw her mother was in 1999. That's when Leona Kinsey, who raised DeFord in La Grande, Ore., went missing. She was never seen again. Her disappearance is just one unsolved case in the nationwide crisis of missing or murdered Indigenous women. In a 2019 interview with StoryCorps, DeFord told the story of her mother's disappearance. The lack of closure — not knowing what happened to her mom, she said at the time — made her grief all the more inescapable. While other people have funerals and ceremonies to acknowledge their loved ones, she didn't feel that she had a place she could go to honor her mother's life. “For the rest of the world, losing somebody, there's a grieving process,” DeFord said. After 22 years, DeFord said recently, she's managed to find moments of reprieve from the grief. DeFord, now 48, returned to StoryCorps this past October, a time of year that usually weighs on her. It's the same month her mother went missing. "As soon as I smell fall and the leaves are turning brown, I always feel a little heavy, a little reminiscent, a little empty."But there's a memory of her mother that she said always brings her comfort. When she was about 6 years old, she was in the car with her mom and a funeral was being broadcast on the radio. DeFord had asked her mother about it. “It's the cycle of life. Everybody dies," she recalled her mom saying. "And I said, 'No, I don't want you ever to die.'” Seeing her daughter upset, Kinsey told DeFord to close her eyes and asked: "Was I still here?" “Yes,” DeFord answered. Kinsey then asked: If her daughter couldn't see her, how did she know she was still there? “I told her, ‘I could feel you,’” DeFord said. “And she said, ‘Well, the part of me that loves you, you'll still be able to feel that.’” With the season change, there's another thing that gives DeFord hope. “This year, I'm not feeling the gloom because my daughter's getting ready to have her first baby,” she said. “I'm just hoping that having something beautiful coming into our lives, it'll overwhelm the ugly — it'll wash it out.” Three days later, on Oct. 21, her family welcomed Caspian Hayes, a healthy baby boy. “The part of me that loves you” in its deepest sense is the presence of the Holy Spirit that all of us share in common. This hidden joy of God coming in our midst is what we celebrate during the season of Christmas. And what can be better than an infant coming to the world, overwhelming the ugly, washing out darkness? May all of us find the joy that comes from within, and Merry Christmas! All the verses from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians can be used in our contemplative practice as a set of mantras. When our minds wander around, pick a phrase or a word used in the verses to bring us back to the present moment. For example, we can gently say “Rejoice” or “The Lord is near, the Lord is here.” This morning I would like to share my reflection on each sentence, and I would like to do this quite liberally in that I won’t go into contextual details of why St. Paul had to say these sayings. I also invite you to ponder on these sayings. So this practice helps you gain wisdom. I am curious to learn and hear from you how the Holy Spirit enlightens you with her Wisdom in your reflective meditation.
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.” Joy is distinct from happiness in that it is the source of true happiness. The key here is that this joy is found “in the Lord” according to St. Paul. This presupposes that God is the very source of joy, and when we’re in the presence of God, joy is available to us. Then our practical question is how we can be in God’s presence. God is nowhere when we have no eyes of contemplation, but God is now here in the very present moment of contemplation. Silence is the very first word God speaks to us in contemplation. Silence then is not an absence of sounds. Rather it is the background music of life, the divine chant that captures the Spirit breathing into our nostrils, keeping us alive. It’s like the air we constantly breathe but take it for granted. Sitting in silence, listening to the sound of silence, is the first step to rejoice in the Lord. This joy is not illusional. It’s realistic as Wendel Berry once said, “Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.” “Let your gentleness be known to everyone.” St. Paul has high expectations of his fellow Christians that they all have a virtue of gentleness. This applies to all of us that we too have gentleness embedded in us whether we believe it or not! While our expression of gentleness varies which depends on our characteristics, this virtue is how we want to be known and remembered. In the same way, we want to remember the gentleness that others have shown us. When I think of each one of you, for example, I have no trouble recollecting the moments you’ve shown your gentleness and kindness to me. This is how we want to remember others and how we want to be remembered. “The Lord is near.” The Lord is near. The Lord is here. The Lord is nearer than we are to ourselves. The closer we are to God, the closer we are to the depth of our being. Imagine good friends seeking to be together. When our hearts confess God’s nearness, we’re in union with God already. Jesus is the flesh symbol of God’s nearness to us and the world. “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Worry isolates us and keeps us from reality. It takes us to the future that hasn’t happened yet and creates anxiety. St. Paul urges us to dig deeper into our worries and let God know our requests with thanksgiving. The essence of his wisdom on how to handle worry is to start with gratitude. Gratitude takes us back into our reality. In the spirit of thanksgiving, we take nothing for gratitude. I’m here right now and have come thus far, never on my own. Our focus is no longer on ourselves but on others. Self-concern is like a swamp that swallows us up whereas gratefulness is like a clear sky or ocean that helps us see beyond ourselves. The word “Eucharist” means giving thanks. We Christians are Eucharistic in a literal sense. “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” The peace of God is not a state where there’s no disturbance or trouble. Remember what the resurrected Christ said when he first saw his friends? It’s not “Hi!” or, “I told you I would be back.” He said, “Peace be with you.” (John 20:19) This peace is born of the resurrection. It overcomes death. In the midst of conflicts, God’s peace, just like joy, remains available to us, but not for our own sakes but for us to be a peacemaker. I hope you’ve been able to practice some contemplation in silence during this season of Advent, using the phrase, “Be alert at all times. Stand before the Son of Man.” What this phrase can give you is the insight that God is compassionately present before us as we become more alert or attuned to the present moment. Breathing is an anchor to keep us back from our wandering minds to the present moment in a literal sense. As soon as we focus on our breathing, we’re living in that very moment. Imagine that God is breathing into us as God breathed into the nostrils of the first human being the breath of life (Genesis 2:7). This whole process of God breathing into our nostrils the breath of life is a kind of incarnation taking place within us. Through our breath, God becomes human. I believe this imagery is quite fitting in this Advent season.
This morning, we heard the words of the prophet Isaiah. His words are fulfilled in the ministry of St. John the baptizer. St. John is that voice in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” (Luke 3:4-6) This voice directly speaks to our hearts when we look at every valley, mountain and hill, and the crooked and rough ways in our hearts. I recently heard a story about playing chess. A mother and a daughter one night were playing chess. As the game went on, the daughter began to notice that her mom wasn’t a very good chess player, losing her pieces one by one. The daughter became aggressive to take them all but in the end, it turned out her mom had done this as a trap and soon, “Checkmate.” The lesson is that in order for us to win, we have to let go of some of our pieces. Similarly, we can think about what to let go of as we ask the following questions that are reflected in Isaiah’s words: What valley of deep pain should be filled with healing? What mountain and hill of resentment and rage should be reconciled? What crooked way of looking at people should be made straight? What rough ways for us to reach out to our neighbors are to be made smooth? To tackle these questions, I once again invite all of us to contemplate in silence. Go deep inside, and face ourselves. We can start with breathing and repeating the mantra of “be alert and stand before the Son of God.” Once we ground ourselves in silence, here’s another mantra to direct us to smooth our ways: “Make my paths straight. Make his paths straight.” See from my perspective what still hurts, what needs to be healed. See who I feel resentful and enraged with? What narratives am I creating in my mind that I want to believe is correct but actually not so? How do I look at others, particularly those who I don’t like so much? Can I, at least (or at most!), wish them goodwill and send them good intentions as I remind myself that my happiness doesn’t conflict with their happiness, trusting that our true joy comes from within, not from without? Reexamine or reprogram the ways I’ve been feeling hurt by, resentful towards, and hostile to others by asking these questions in meditation. This is to make my paths straight. Another way to make my paths straight is to revisit the confession of sin in the prayer book: “...we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed…” What thought, word, and deed are making my paths uneven? Once we get to this point in candor, let’s remind ourselves in hope that this is how his paths are made straight. Only after managing what’s in the way of Christ, we can see the way which has always been here in our hearts. We don’t make the Spirit come and pave but make ourselves see and experience the presence of the Spirit who has never left us all along. As we utter the mantra of “making his paths straight,” the Living Flame of the Spirit may burn into us to think compassionately, her cleansing wind may blow through us to speak wisely, and her fountain of water may well up within us to act out of abundant love and grace. In this contemplative way, Christ walks into the very depth of our hearts, and we see Christ walking in and out of our neighbors’ hearts too. Amen. The theme of Advent is two-fold. One is about waiting for the birth of Jesus whereas his second coming holds the other. The former aspect of Advent isn’t too difficult since it’s already embedded in our culture. Think about an Advent calendar, counting days for Christmas or Christnas presents. What’s more troubling is the second part, the second coming, which is often linked with the end of the world or Judgment Day. It’s troublesome not because of its apocalyptic depiction but because of its tardiness. This passage from St. Luke’s gospel was written at least 2,000 years ago. For Christians in the first century, this passage was taken literally that Jesus would soon come and change the entire world but for us, we need to honestly ask ourselves how to make sense of this apocalyptic message from the gospel lesson. We eventually come to the fundamental question of what the second coming is really about.
What’s helpful to get this message correctly is to 1) internalize it and 2) make it happen now. We tend to look outside to see if the second coming is happening or the powers of heaven are shaken. Instead of turning our eyes on the outside, let’s look inside ourselves and ponder on whether we are waiting for God-with-us, Emmanuel in the depth of our being. Are we longing to invite God-with-us into our hearts? Do we have spiritual eyes to welcome the coming of Emmanuel within ourselves? Are we awake? This awareness of the perpetual coming of God-with-us here and now is the essence of Advent spirituality. Jesus urges his friends, “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and stand before the Son of Man.” It’s easier for us to go to the place where God becomes the Judge of all and decides who’s going to make a cut to heaven. This Holywood-like imagination is too much of a stretch from my perspective. It is unrealistically fear-mongering and is against Jesus’ intention whose focus is always on the here and now moment. What we do right now matters more than what will happen to us in the future or when we die or afterlife because our actions in the present moment bear the fruit of what’s to come. As we pay attention, being alert at all times as Jesus says, to the here and now moment, we can change the course of our past actions that have made up who we are and how we function. We cannot change our past actions but can change and shape how these past actions influence us in the present moment and future. God’s forgiveness does not only touch our hearts and breaks the wall of guilt and shame. But it also paves the new way for us to make a change in our lives and those of others that we care about. The cliche of “be present” or “stay in the present moment” becomes meaningless if being present is the only purpose. It’s a tool. It’s a means to actually transform our actions in the present moment with the help of the Holy Spirit to have an impact on our present and future actions. The “strength to escape all these things that will take place” that Jesus talks about is this very strength to stay in the present moment and to make adequate changes in our lives. Notice and examine what habits we are programmed to repeat by default. Accept and acknowledge our shortcomings and refuse to repeat them as we trust in God’s faithfulness and compassion to us. This whole process of staying in the present moment and examining our past actions, mental and physical, to transform the course of our present and future actions takes us to encounter the God-with-us in Christ. This season of Advent is usually themed with waiting which can suggest a passive attitude toward the coming of God in our midst. Waiting doesn’t have to be passive, however. We are to passionately wait as we stay alert with the present moment first and examine our past actions rather judiciously than judgmentally to transform our actions in contemplation. This is our way to “stand before the Son of Man” during this Advent season. So in this first week of Advent, I want to invite all of you to meditate together whenever you are free with the phrase: “Be alert at all times. Stand before the Son of Man.” Sit in silence as you breathe comfortably. When you feel distracted, use those sayings as your anchor to hold you back to the present moment. Let’s try this as a way to passionately wait. May we experience the compassionate presence of God deeper during this Advent season. Amen. Identities matter to people. It is a means to have a sense of belonging. When we say we have a certain identity of being something, it means we identify with something that we share in common with others who identify with that something. That common denominator functions as a ticket to join that identity. It is so natural that we social animals have a desire to belong to a community, that we are not alone in this world. This is a healthy way to live a meaningful life and find meanings and purposes in our lives by which we experience a sense of fulfillment.
But there’s always a danger of exclusion in this identity-making process. When we are too fixated on certain identities, we end up pushing out those who don’t share in common. There’s no room for differences. This strong fixation or grasping lacks a healthy desire to be diverse. It is only attracted to a secure, firm, unshaken status that is almost eternal and divine. A certain identity has become a religion of its own, and any identity group that doesn’t allow diversity is divisive and destructive. In the gospel lesson today, we see Jesus’ disciples identify themselves with the temple in Jerusalem. They say, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” This is the common denominator that they all share not only with themselves but with the rest of Jewish communities. They themselves are the magnificent temple. This may be the only identity that brings them together under the Roman ruling. Jesus too identifies himself with the temple but in a completely different way. He responds to his disciples’ astonishing remark on the temple, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” Later he makes another comment on the temple, more explicitly identifying himself with the temple and coupling it with his death and resurrection: “I will destroy this temple made with human hands and in three days will build another, not made with hands.” (Mark 14:57) What’s that temple built with “large stones and large buildings” that we identify ourselves with? There can be many temples we hold onto as our identities. Biological features we are given as we are born can be that temple. Economic wealth can be that temple. Social status too. In our workaholic culture, our professional roles can fixate our identities. I might be holding to the hat of being a boss even at home or gathering with friends. Our roles are not who we are but how we function in a different context with a specific goal. For example, if one who is a physician is hospitalized, that person is a patient in that context though with lots of medical knowledge. How that person becomes a difficult patient is when attempting to function as a physician. So, what are these temples that we identify ourselves with? It takes some spiritual skills to see what they are. We sit silently and face what they are. What identity do I want to cling to? As experienced proofreaders, we thoroughly check in with ourselves. This invites one to the place of meditation or contemplation. Ask and respond non-judgmentally. What is my identity? “I’m the daughter of so-and-so, I’m the husband, I’m a manager, I’m so and so…” We want to go deeper so we question those responses. “But that’s who you are only with your parents, your spouse, your work, and so on.” The question of identity then leads to the question of who I am. When we reach that ultimate question upon question, it may trigger some anxiety or fear of losing ourselves. This may be what Jesus means: “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” Not so comforting. Far from it. But that is the point. We’re stripped of all identities that we’ve been fabricating out of existential anxiety and insecurity. In that very moment of not knowing who we are, becoming speechless before the very existence of ours, simply being, we sit with God. This practice is to experience the death of our ego. Our need for identities, which is to belong, to not be alone, disappears because we’re with God the Ultimate Reality. We don’t need any other common denominator to be identified with God. Our being is enough. This is one of many purposes and benefits of contemplation. We are free from labels through the death of ego and the resurrection. We stop feeding off from identities and statuses but feed on the Eucharist. This allows us to revisit those identities that we have and use them or fabricate them according to God’s will. We expand our ability to identify with those who are so different from us that our identical boundaries invite those who share nothing in common. We’re then identified with love and we become that human face of love. So how do we begin this process of transforming our identities? We sit together and contemplate with the help of the Holy Spirit. Amen It’s no longer a secret that Jesus is explicitly critical of local religious authorities and the wealthy though we don’t seem to talk about this enough. In our time, we still have the wealthy and religious or political authorities who might still be criticized by Jesus. It’s always easy to criticize them as if we ourselves are Jesus. This is unhealthy and toxic when done uncritically without personal and communal discernment and spiritual awareness of the danger of self-validating righteousness. What’s much more crucial is to understand what Jesus sees in those who have enormous power as well as what he sees in the poor widow at the synagogue. What is it that Jesus considers essential to have our world here and now transform to the kingdom of God?
Let’s imagine that we’re sitting next to Jesus in the synagogue and looking at the scribes and people offering to the temple treasury. Giving money to the temple treasury in his time is considered as offering to God just like our time while how that money is actually used is a different subject matter. It seems there are two types of people in Jesus’ eyes. How these people are categorized depends on the level of ego which can be shown by their behaviors at the synagogue. This place of worship has somewhat become the place all self-gratifying desires manifest. The scribes are consumed with their egoistic desires according to Jesus’ interpretation. They like to walk around in long robes and say long prayers, caring more about how they look as if their clothes can make them instantly holy. They enjoy their socio-religious status wherever they go. The wealthy who are putting money in large sums into the temple treasury are also driven by their egoistic desires. The fact that Jesus can tell how much they put into the treasury demonstrates people are aware of how much or little each person offers. While the scribes misguide people with the idea that the more they give the better they serve God and the more God favors them, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer in both economic and spiritual senses. This incorrect teaching of the scribes is how they devour widows’ houses. Then comes the poor widow who is misinformed of the teaching on how one can serve God. She puts in two copper coins. It’s worth 1/64 of a day’s wage. In today’s terms, it would be less than $2. Despite the reality that everyone else is watching how much she would put in, she still goes ahead. We might accuse her of not knowing the true meanings of offering to God and uncritically obeying the teaching of the scribes, but we cannot deny that her heart for God is genuine. The ones who are misleading her sincerely held faith in God are guilty. There’s no ego-driven motivation in her act of giving $2 to the treasury and risking social shame. Now, Jesus’ sole concern isn’t so much about who has more power or money but who is full of themselves. Power or money is what fuels their ego. I find the analogy of fire as the most helpful way of depicting the nature of the ego. The ego as fire constantly looks for something to burn so it can not only continue to exist but also spread. Think of self-aggrandizement, for example. Whatever or whoever is around those whose fire of ego is burning becomes a source of fuel. Wearing long robes helps. Saying long prayers does too. Maybe the best fuel is their power to control and dictate how people ought to worship God. For the rich, their fire of ego burns and spreads as they give money in large sums to the treasury while everyone watches them, believing what they’re doing is something to be respected by others and accepted by God. The cross of Jesus goes directly against this flame of ego. It extinguishes the flame that there’s nothing left but ashes. This image, however, might make us feel a bit nihilistic. It’s not. From ashes arises a radically different flame of the Spirit. As Moses at Horeb encounters God in a flame of fire out of a bush that is blazing but is not consumed, this divine flame born out of death and resurrection does not need fuels to burn more. (ref. Exodus 3) Jesus in today’s gospel lesson then asks us how we continue to fuel the flame of ego and whether we want to burn and spread this fire. Can we be curious to know and learn about what sources of fuel we seek to use? Can we acknowledge and accept that this fire would eventually consume us, which bears the fruit of constant dissatisfaction with life? Can we trust in God who selflessly loves us and thus makes us whole even if we suffer from our existential insecurity? May it be so. Amen. |
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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