To find “ourselves” then is to find not only our poor, limited, perplexed souls, but to find the power of God that raised Christ from the dead and “built us together in Him unto a habitation of God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:22).
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
It’s Holy Week. I’d like to share some music with you, a setting of Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) I wrote a couple of years back.
John the Baptist said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”
I cannot discover God in myself and myself in Him unless I have the courage to face myself exactly as I am, with all my limitations, and to accept others as they are, with all their limitations.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
Do I have the courage to admit, to accept, to own how broken I am?
Will I let myself feel it, not just assent to it?
Though it feel scary as hell and shameful as sin, for the prospect of finding God in there somewhere, loving me and holding me, am I willing to do it?
Am I willing to do it as many times as it takes…for the love of God?
Am I willing to try again if it was too much for me last time?
Maybe then, just maybe, I might see you in a different light, knowing you are facing the same fears, the same questions, the same choices…the same God.
Maybe, just maybe, I might meet you where you are, accept you, even love you, as you are.
Grace and peace to us…
The heart is the dwelling–place where I am, where I live…the place “to which I withdraw.” The heart is our hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others…The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death.
“…only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully.”
— Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2563
What every man looks for in life is his own salvation and the salvation of the [ones] he lives with. By salvation I mean first of all the full discovery of who he himself really is. Then I mean something of the fulfillment of his own God-given powers, in the love of others and of God. I mean also the discovery that he cannot find himself in himself alone, but that he must find himself in and through others.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
becoming flame 