Tuesday, April 3, 2012

April 3 - Grace Upon Grace



We looked yesterday at the dual nature of monastic love and the dual engines that foster it. We love God and we love others; we learn of God and we learn to know ourselves, the people whom God has loved.

What might family life look like if its members knew they would be living under the same roof to the day of their death? That puts an interesting spin on things, doesn’t it? That’s the monastic future! We do not have that vision for our future or for that of our children, but we know this, we may love them as long as we live! No distance can keep us from it, no disappointment can forbid it. We may love within our homes, and we may love those who have been sheltered and nurtured there, no matter where they are. They are “our” children. We may love "our" friends and "our enemies," too! They belong to us!

As we develop lives of devotional strength and majesty, as we become worshipers of God in spirit and in truth, our love becomes wonderfully powerful in its effect. Selfish, encroaching, smothering love will be sifted out and blown away, and the love that spoke the perfect world into being that men and women might live here and love here will be ours, and it will have power.

To set out to love others without the ongoing, refreshing, invigorating, wise and true worship of God, is to love little and not quite honestly. To set out to love God without opening our hearts to those He has placed in our lives is to love without faith, and without faith, it is impossible to please Him.

We practice love; that is how we live here in Cor Unum. We begin to treat our Father and Lord as we ought. How do we at all know God without bowing before Him? How do we bow before Him that He will not lift us up to wash the feet of those around us? We take time to love God today, to bring our love before Him and to give it, to proclaim it, to return it to Him. He gives us outlet for the love that fills our hearts, and those avenues are before us, heart to heart, daily.

Let us worship, dear ones, worship on purpose, let us worship from the depths of our souls this day, and then let us find someone to love with the love of God. A card, an invitation, a helping hand - let us worship before the throne of grace and by the grace we receive there, for we are the monastics of Cor Unum, the monastery of the heart.


"Practicing, Not Playing"
Abbatial Photo

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