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| flying into OKC [June 2014] |
My good friend Pat Stankus used to say that at the end of
the day, the one question I must answer in my spiritual journey is this: “am I
doing my part?”
Whether we call it surrender, an open heart, a willing
spirit, detachment… ultimately, that’s what I’m responsible for, showing up to prayer and
saying, my Lord and my God... here I am.
The rest is up to God. And as I continue to be reminded, I
do mean all of it. Whether I will
continue to grow. Be able to forgive. Become whole. Grow in holiness. See with new eyes. Understand. Accept. Become. Let go. Even how “well” I can pray. Letting go of resentment. Or become worthy of the promises of Jesus the Christ.
Something I read today (with a few ‘first person’ adaptations)
by Alfred Delp, S.J., a heroic German priest who was imprisoned and martyred by the Nazis in a death
camp in 1945:
[T]he
quiet angels of annunciation, who speak
their message of blessing into the distress and scatter their seeds of the
blessing that will begin to grow in the
middle of the night. These are not
the loud angels of public jubilation and fulfillment, these angels of
Advent. Silently and unnoticed, they
come into private rooms and appear before our hearts as they did long go. Silently they bring the questions of
God and proclaim to us the miracles of
God, with whom nothing is impossible…
[If
I]…no longer perceive the quiet footsteps of the announcing angels, if the
angels murmured word does not
simultaneously shame [me] to the depths and lift up [my] soul—then it is over
for us. Then we are living wasted time, and we are dead, long before they
do anything to us.
~from “Advent of the Heart:
(Ignatius Press)
I had to read that last paragraph several times, and am
still sitting with it. Perhaps it’s because right now life feels so very fragile and short, and I desperately
don’t want to live in “wasted time,” but I find his words provoking, yes,
and challenging, but also weirdly reassuring.
As Father Delp goes on to say, “To believe in the golden seeds
of God that the angels have scattered and continue to offer an open heart are
the first things we must do with our lives.”
Show up! The rest
is up to God.
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