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“The Divine Heart is an ocean full of all good things, wherein poor souls can cast all their needs; it is an ocean full of joy to drown all our sadness, an ocean of humility to drown our folly, an ocean of mercy to those in distress, an ocean of love in which to submerge our poverty.”— St. Margaret Mary Alacoque
“As the rain and snow come down from the heavens and do not return without watering the earth and making it yield…so the word does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeeding in what it was sent to do” (Isaiah 55:10–11).
Isaiah is writing in the fullness of the Babylonian exile, Jerusalem has fallen, no end in sight, and still he (some say “she”!) can speak with totally calm inevitability, kind certainty, and even joyful trust. (Treat yourself and open your Bible to 55:12–13 to see the final exclamation point, which is not included in the Lectionary reading.)
Then we have Matthew’s version of the “Our Father,” preceded by a warning against “rattling on” with too many prayers, and ending with a promise of a perfect and fair equivalence between how you forgive and how you will be forgiven. Jesus made the essential requirement for the forgiveness of sin rather clear and definitive here: As you do it, it will be done to you. If you do not do it, it cannot be done to you.
We are merely and forever inside of the divine flow, just like Isaiah’s “rain and snow.” Forgiveness is not some churchy technique or formula. Forgiveness is constant from God’s side, which should become a calm, joyous certainty on our side. Mercy received will be mercy passed on, and “will not return to me empty, until it has succeeded in what it was sent to do.”
—from the book Wondrous Encounters: Scriptures for Lent
by Richard Rohr, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
There are two moments that matter. One is when you know that your one and only life is absolutely valuable and alive. The other is when you know your life, as presently lived, is entirely pointless and empty. You need both of them to keep you going in the right direction. Lent is about both. The first such moment gives you energy and joy by connecting you with your ultimate Source and Ground. The second gives you limits and boundaries, and a proper humility, so you keep seeking the Source and Ground and not just your small self.
The paradox, of course, is that you find yourself anyway: your Big Self in God and your little self in you. God loves them both. Saint Teresa of Avila summed it up when she said, “We find God in ourselves, and we find ourselves in God.” With such a maxim, she did not likely need a therapist. Yet, I would add, that it is always much more like being found than actually finding anything! As Paul put it, “then I shall know as fully as I am known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).
So during these forty days of Lent, let’s allow ourselves to be known! All the way through. Nothing to hide from, in ourselves, from ourselves, or from God. Allow yourself to be fully known, and you will know what you need to know. This is my desire in writing these meditations. It is in this wondrous loop of divine disclosure, our own now safe self-disclosure, and a healing mutual acceptance—that we grow “in wisdom, maturity, and grace” (Luke 2:40). In fact, that is the way that all love happens, and the only way we grow at all.
—from the book Wondrous Encounters: Scriptures for Lent
by Richard Rohr, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
“Now man need not hide from God as Adam did; for He can be seen through Christ’s human nature. Christ did not gain one perfection more by becoming man, nor did He lose anything of what He possessed as God. There was the Almightiness of God in the movement of His arm, the infinite love of God in the beatings of His human heart and the Unmeasured Compassion of God to sinners in His eyes. God was now manifest in the flesh; this is what is called the Incarnation. The whole range of the Divine attributes of power and goodness, justice, love, beauty, were in Him. And when Our Divine Lord acted and spoke, God in His perfect nature became manifest to those who saw Him and heard Him and touched Him. As He told Philip later on: Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father [John 14:9].”— Fulton J. Sheen, p. 21