One of the passages that I find fascinating is the gospel that we proclaimed on Sunday in the passage that says, AGod so loved the world that He sent His Son, gave His Son to redeem us.@ I find it fascinating because what does it mean for God to so love the world? It means that if God the Father had a choice between His Son and the world He chooses the world. That=s awesome! We find it just the opposite. With the world=s sinfulness and problems we want to run from it. Or worse. Yet that=s precisely what the text says that AGod so loved the world that He sent His Son.@

            We need to reflect on this because as monks we pray and certainly work. Prayer is our rhythm but one of the strong elements of our prayer should be praise. Which means we=re struck with awe at the sheer goodness of God. So this passage opens it up a bit and makes us just wonder.

            One of the wonders that one has is that this is God that we=re talking about. God sent His Son. His Son is in glory! Suppose Jesus came in glory what would happen? What happened on Mount Tabor when James, John and Peter saw the Lord in glory? They fell flat on their face in terror.

            One of the miracles that God had to make happen was to turn the switch off on His radiant glory so that we would not be terrified by His coming. On the other hand, God shows that He really wants to draw near to us in such a way that we=re comfortable, willing to approach Him, even touch Him. At the same time for God to do that, to become a human being to bend down from His majesty to our nature, it opened Him up to be vulnerable. If He=s in glory nothing can really touch Him. No suffering, no difficulty, nothing. By turning off His radiant glory and becoming a human being, He opened Himself up to be vulnerable. So not only did the Father love the world over His Son, but Jesus loved us to the point of embracing our sinfulness which was a pain for Him. Since He was moved to pity for us so often for us, as the text say, His pain must have been much greater than we can probably comprehend way before the passion.

            We see beside the great mystery that God should choose the world over us and Jesus should choose to open Himself up to such vulnerability we have the great mystery that this is God we=re talking about who bends down to lift us up. This mystery is continued in the Eucharist. The same mystery. We are filled with wonder and awe of this incomprehensible graciousness that bends down to pick us up. We should ask ourselves to what degree do we really believe that God loves us this way. I think it=s pretty hard to believe God loves us this way. Anytime we get discouraged, anytime we quit, anytime we get frustrated about our spiritual life, probably is a sign that we don=t really believe that God loves us that much.

            We=re doing the workshop on Saturday for healing and going through the sacraments. One of the things we try to do is try to teach people how to pray. One of the things I found very fascinating was the encouragement by the example of some people is when you go and pray to the Lord and you=re struggling with your spiritual life instead of beseeching the Lord to deliver you from this or that, just thank Him for healing you of this or that. That=s really based upon the belief that God loves us that much. This way you don=t put yourself in a bind of looking at your faults and weaknesses and always begging the Lord but you begin to look up and you praise the Lord by saying to Him, ALord, I know you know everything I know about myself, this or that problem, so I thank you for healing this, I give it to you and I thank you ahead of time.@

Back to Abbot's page