A challenge

In today's Office of Readings extracanonical passage from a letter to Diognetus, we gain a clear insight into how Christianity could have blossomed in the early Church, as well as what is chiefly wrong with us today. I find it closely related to my Lenten reflections on what it really means to follow the Way of the Cross. I also find myself wondering whether I will ever live up to my calling.

I've speculated that the calling of all Christians is to bear everything, even (especially!) our hurts, with love and joy. But we remain unwilling to bear a wrong done unto us with the love of Christ. Rather than see our cross as a joy to be embraced, we view it as a burden to avoid at every opportunity. In recent weeks I've had opportunity to reflect on this as various brothers and sisters in the Lord have shared their challenges in this area.

We too often fail to be transformed in Christ in this one area that most defined His love. We insist on valuing our self - our status, possessions, security, comfort, and pleasure - ahead of honoring and serving those around us. This morning, as I took on a household chore that I judged my wife should have at least made progress on, my attitude was not that of a loving husband embracing the opportunity to make his wife's day a little better. Instead, my heart was full of resentment, over debris not having been rinsed off of the dishes I was washing and over the time I was losing at the beginning of my workday that would prevent me from leaving when I hoped to at the end thereof.

My chore was a good thing, but approaching it as a ministry would have been far better. A reader may think I'm holding myself to an impossible standard. Still, I know that given a chance to minister this morning, I was more Martha than Mary in my approach to the task at hand.

Does the Holy Spirit dwell in us or not? If so, we must ask this Counselor to transform us in ways that are impossible by our own efforts.

Come, Holy Spirit. Fill the hearts of your faithful, and enkindle in us the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit, and we shall be created, and you will renew the face of the earth.

Now I can die in peace?

Okay, that might be a little extreme. Still, after consistently being dropped by my cycling group pretty much every time out, and last year resigning myself to the fact that I'd never be able to keep up, I hung with them pretty well for an entire 50-miler yesterday. Woo-hoo!!

(Man, are my legs tired!)

More from St. Augustine

As a music minister, I was especially moved by St. Augustine's words in today's Office of Readings.

That's "today's" as in "the day I posted this," not necessarily "the day you read this," which after today - by the definition in this parenthetical - would be a different link, in all probability won't contain anything by St. Augustine, but is still probably worth your time!

Sometimes we musicians tend to think our primary prayer is our song. After all, it was St. Augustine who also said that to sing is to pray twice. But this reading makes it clear that our primary prayer must be to live in Christ's love.

I still struggle with this, hesitant to yield my will over some parts of my life. It's hard to fully accept that embracing God's will results in greater joy and love than chasing my own. After all, isn't our primary objection that "we don't want to miss out on all the 'fun'!"

St. Augustine was intimately familiar with that perspective, too.

I knew this was my second post from St. Augustine, but it took me a while to find the first, two years and two days ago, on a completely different reading, since Easter was later that year . . . This blog was practically brand new then!