Thursday, August 12, 2010

Without Christ you have not embraced reality according to the totality of factors

As Sts. Clare and Francis clearly knew, precisely from the change that occurred when they encountered Him, we must put all things at service of fulfulling our destiny, nothing held back. To do so requires letting go, which requires trust. Just as we don't have faith in faith, a mistake so many make (faith cannot be its own object anymore than can love and hope- it is the object of these that make them the theological virtues), we must place our trust, that is, our hope, in Someone.

So, when we say, sometimes thoughtlessly, "There is a reason for everything," that reason can be summed in two words, Jesus Christ. He is the One we must learn to trust totally. This trust often falters because we are childish: "He didn't give me what I want," we say (even if what I want seems a good, even selfless thing to me). Therefore, He doesn't exist, or, even worse, He doesn't care about me. As St. Paul tells us in that over-used and very often grossly sentimentalized passage on love in 1 Corinthians, we must put aside our childish ways in order to know as we are "fully known" (13:11-12- ESV). Sometimes, as Fr. Aldo Trento observed in a recent interview with Marina Corradi for Il Sussidiario, which is well worth checking out daily, somtimes there is a void, like St. Paul's thorn, in order "to provoke a more intense question.".

The Head of Christ, by Georges Rouault c. 1937

You may well ask "how" does Christ do this, especially when we apply this to ALL things? Green Day provides a better answer than I can: "It's not a question but an answer learned in time," that is, through experience, which is the instrument for our human journey, a journey that has a destination, a fulfillment, which is our completion. In other words, Christ works through reality, not over and above. He does so in a pervasive way.

To see this, to really live this, requires a method and the companionship of others. So, while I am seeking intercession today for a myriad of reasons, I look to Msgr. Giussani for guidance, not just from heaven, but also in The Religious Sense and in the Exercises.

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