Now the deepest aspect of love is to be personal. A husband doesn’t exactly like it when his wife continues to dust the furniture as he= s talking to her. Or the wife doesn’t appreciate the husband if he’s got the newspaper in his face and he doesn’t drop it to pay attention to her. So we have a difficulty with this because we tend to judge each other in many ways and maybe even more so as monks because we have standards that we say, A well, he= s not much of a monk.@

The first thing is there aren’t in this room right now two people who are identical. You and each one of us here is absolutely unique, there= s nobody like us in the whole world. Never has been and never will be. Of course we have a face that= s absolutely unique. There never will be one like this face for all eternity, except me. That means that God who is personal treats each of us in our unique person. Because of that each of us has a unique track to follow. God= s will for me is not exactly the same for you and vice versa.

This means we have to learn to appreciate this mystery that God has given us. It’s something that we ought to even consider especially when we sit quietly in prayer before God. God is treating me uniquely. He knows me uniquely. And he’s treating me personally. And he’s good at being personal. Of course the time that this will reach its completion is when we get judged. When I stand before the Lord he’s not going to ask me what do the monks think of you. He’s going to ask me; "What did you do with the 75 years I gave you?" "And of all the generosity and time and graces I gave you?"

When did we begin this journey? We began this journey in the womb. At that moment God gave us the greatest gift that he could give us, namely ourselves, a unique being called out of nothing. Of course in that merciful gift it means if God thinks we= re that important then we should be happy to be whom we are. It’s good to be me. Before that we lived in the mind of God. God has a plan for each of us and all of us and that is that we are each made in the image and likeness of God and therefore, we must fulfill that in a unique way. From that moment on from the womb, the Lord, being personal, treats each of us in our uniqueness and moves us to fulfill that image in us. And he’s trying to bring it to completion, to maturity.

Inseparable from this personal ness of God is that he has a unique intimacy with each of us and we= re made for this so we don= t have to fear it or run away from it but begin to try to pay attention to it. He= s so intimate that his presence is most of the time we don= t pay attention to this because we= re occupied with many other things. But if he= s truly personal to me then he= s aware of each of my movements and that he suffers when I= m in pain and he= s rejoicing when I= m moving in the right direction and wholeness and everything in between he= s there. Also in my weakness he’s there.

So we are one of a kind. This reveals the infinite imagination of God to create so many unique persons. Since we are all called to live under the same God in faith and love which we are trying to do, we have to learn the basic formational practice for all of us is really learning to listen from our heart to the Word of God. Because that Word is addressed to us uniquely. Now I can= t make you listen to the Word of God. All I can do is encourage you and if you talk to me and I can say that sounds pretty good and that doesn’t sound too good, how do you know that this is in line with God= s teaching. So where do we find this Word of God objectively, of course is in whole of Scripture but especially in the New Testament, in the teaching of the church and in our lives. It’s there already.

The Lenten season should be a season in which we really are not so much focused on asceticism as such, but rather intensify our capacity to let the Lord complete the work he= s doing in us. Therefore to pay more attention to what are the words that the Lord is addressing to me because he speaks to me uniquely. His word to me can’t be the same word to you. There= s some general categories but concretely when we fulfill it it’s a unique word to me so we have to learn what is the language that God is using to speak to me. Of course if we learn to respond to it then we will begin to hear what are the words addressed to me. We see it in the lives of the Saints at noon prayer. We see how some of the saints turn around their life when something happens in their life and they hear the Gospel for the first time and we see how they were really addressed.

Now we can help each other out in two ways. We have learned to love each other into existence that is to do good to each other that always promotes each other. And also listen to each other. Really pay attention to the other. In that way we help each other really unfold and become the unique image of Christ that God meant us to be.