Giving myself timelessness

I do not ask you to forget the present and imagine that it is Holy Week. Rather, I invite you to be open to the thought that you are now calling the present is Holy Week, for all time was there, is there, at the cross. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

I have previously blogged on this passage here, and given the subject matter I shouldn't be surprised that it still seems relevant as I start reading this book for the fifth or sixth time. I've reflected on it so often that I will probably often find, as I'm prompted to write again by this excellent read, that there are few passages I haven't already written about. Still, this is part of my enjoyment of this great book, and I am certain it will continue to be relevant to my faith journey. I will therefore share, probably with no audience, my thoughts as I progress through it again in the upcoming Lenten season. After all, I'm in a different place from where I've ever been before, so I can expect to have new insights. 

I have actually tried to pick this book up a couple times in more recent years, since my last total reading. But I've always concluded that I've waited too late into Lent or Holy Week to read the whole thing. I've therefore skipped over this beginning part, and as a result missed coming back to this central point that makes the entire rest of the book work for me, as I discussed in that previous post. Relationships deepen when the present obscures other urgencies. So this year I hope to give myself the gift of fully rediscovering this treasure as I take the time to reflect on Jesus' love as revealed in this defining purpose of His Incarnation. I hope to keep the demands of life from distracting me from reading and meditating until I find something I want to reflect on, perhaps for the second or third occasion. I hope to enter more deeply still the relationship to which my loving God always calls me, being drawn more fully into the unfathomable depths of boundless Love.