In Our Weakness We Shall Become One With Him

This meditation from The Magnificat reflects on how radically different Christian spirituality is to modern day secular psychology where it is all about self - loving yourself.  What makes the righteous shine is not about first loving your self but truly loving our all loving God who shines forth upon His children, His Grace and Blessings. At mass this morning, Father asked us to thank all the wonderful grand-parents leaving their imprint and tradition on us.  In this thankfulness we see how we really are - a weaving of many relationships - we are more inter-dividual, being molded and shaped by our relationships along with the Holy Spirit than we are separate and 'individual' like pseudo-psychology would make us out to be.

What Makes the Righteous Shine

What then have we to do? We must realise that God is our tremendous lover, that he is our all and that he has done all our works for us. We must believe in God and not in ourselves; we must hope in God and not in ourselves; we must love God and not ourselves. As Saint Augustine told us, there is one man who reaches to the extremities of the universe and unto the end of time. We have to enter into this one man - this one Christ - by faith, hope, and charity. We have to find our all in him. He is our full complement and our perfect supplement. No matter how weak we are, he is our strength; no matter how empty we are, he is our full­ness; no matter how sinful we are, he is our holiness. All we have to do is to accept God's plan - to say as Christ said coming into the world: "A body thou hast fitted to me; behold I come to do thy will, 0 God." We have to accept the self, and the surroundings, and the story, that God's providence arranges for us. In humility we must accept our self - just as we are; in charity, we must accept and love our neighbour just as he is; in abandonment, we must accept God's will just as things happen to us, and just as he would have us act. Faithful compliance with his will and humble acceptance of his arrangements will bring us to full union with Christ For the rest, let us gladly glory in our infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in us. In our weakness and in our love we shall thus become one with him, and there shall be one Christ loving himself.

DOM M. EUGENE BOYLAN, o. ClST. R.

Dom Boylan (+ 1963) was a monk of the Cistercian Abbey of Mount Saint Joseph, Roscrea, Ireland.