Henri Nouwen once wrote that Lent is the season where we practice choosing the way of God again. Every day there are numerous choices to make with our time, money, thoughts, and energy. With our whole lives. On Ash Wednesday we take time to review our life choices: we let God's forgiveness and love embrace our hearts without reservation, we humbly accept God's inward cleansing and renewal, and we decide again to walk in the way of Christ for another year. To choose the way of Christ is to take up our Cross and let our unique wounds become the source of our healing. Nouwen puts it like this:
Your call is to bring you pain home (to God.) As long as your wounded parts remain foreign to your (mature heart) your pain will injure you as well as others. So you have to incorporate it into your self and let it bear fruit in your heart and the hearts of others. This is what Jesus means when he asks you to take up your cross. He encourages you to recognize and embrace your unique suffering and to trust that your way to salvation lies therein. Taking up your cross means, first of all, befriending your wounds and letting them reveal to you your own truth.
To live into the way of Jesus, therefore, is to go through the necessary stages of spiritual awakening so that we mature and ripen in grace. St. Paul wrote: "When I was a child I spoke like a child and acted like a child; but as I journeyed on the path to maturity, I learned to put childish things away... now I know that in this moment I can see only as through a mirror darkly; even as I trust that later I shall see face to face." In another passage, the Apostle tells the young church in Corinth that:
We have plenty of wisdom to pass on to you once you get your feet on firm spiritual ground, but it’s not popular wisdom, the fashionable wisdom of high-priced experts that will be out-of-date in a year or so. God’s wisdom is something mysterious that goes deep into the interior of his purposes. You don’t find it lying around on the surface. It’s not the latest message, but more like the oldest—what God determined as the way to bring out his best in us, long before we ever arrived on the scene. The experts of our day haven’t a clue about what this eternal plan is. (The Message I Corinthians 2)
To the rich young lawyer, Jesus said: "If you wish to become mature (teleios) you must sell your possessions, give the money to the poor and come and follow me." (Matthew 19: 22) The disciple whom Jesus loved, St. John, wrote in I John 4: "Love has been perfected among us. Ripened... There is no fear in this love, because mature love casts out fear; fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached completion in love." And a disciple writing in the spirit of St. Paul noted in Ephesians 4 that:
The gifts God gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and... maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.
For those interested in living more fully into the presence of Christ rather than observing only the outward forms of our tradition, I have found the distinctions between perfect and ripened and/or matured vital. Jean Vanier builds on such a distinction when he writes: "The problem with us is that we can be governed by fear. Fear of not being loved, fear of being abandoned, fear of suffering, fear of death. It is very important for human beings that we touch our fears - to know where our fears are - because we cannot let ourselves be governed by our fears." Indeed one of the blessings that Vanier has learned and shared with the world through L'Arche is that we each have unique wounds that hold holy wisdom for us if we trust God's way of ripening and maturing into them. The wisdom of our wounds takes us deeper into God's grace and authentic humility. The alternative can be living in denial, fear, shame and violence. Or else superficiality and immaturity. Childishness.
The gifts God gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and... maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.
For those interested in living more fully into the presence of Christ rather than observing only the outward forms of our tradition, I have found the distinctions between perfect and ripened and/or matured vital. Jean Vanier builds on such a distinction when he writes: "The problem with us is that we can be governed by fear. Fear of not being loved, fear of being abandoned, fear of suffering, fear of death. It is very important for human beings that we touch our fears - to know where our fears are - because we cannot let ourselves be governed by our fears." Indeed one of the blessings that Vanier has learned and shared with the world through L'Arche is that we each have unique wounds that hold holy wisdom for us if we trust God's way of ripening and maturing into them. The wisdom of our wounds takes us deeper into God's grace and authentic humility. The alternative can be living in denial, fear, shame and violence. Or else superficiality and immaturity. Childishness.
"There is great pain and suffering in the world," Nouwen wrote. "But the pain hardest to bear is our own. Once you have taken up that cross, you will be able to see clearly the crosses that others have to bear, and you will be able to reveal to them their own ways to joy, peace, and freedom. " Lent invites us by grace to go deeper into love. To ripen in our trust. To grow up in the presence of Jesus and his Cross.
credits:
+ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/55872851605285018/?lp=true
+ veritaslifecenter.org
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