CIY, Day 4

Two thoughts on today's reflection:

I love the idea that Fr. Mike expresses, that God doesn't merely love any individual one of us out of some sort of obligation that makes God merely tolerate us. Rather, God loves us individually, abundantly, and deeply, and willingly embraces us. I'm a little concerned that Fr. Mike may have left an impression that the things that the search for God demands of us are prerequisites to encountering God. We can look at it as a list of things that will always be beyond us. Rather, I think they are things we need to ask God to provide and nurture in us, anticipating in faith that, in God's boundless love for us, God is eager for us to encounter and grow in Him. It is the prayer of the father of the sick child in Mk 9: "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!" We all need to grow in each of these areas, and God would never let us flounder about until we get there on our own efforts, but rather is eager to help us when we humbly depend on God's love to do what we never could on our own.

Finally catching on

This was probably about the fourth Lenten season that I started reading Death on a Friday Afternoon. I started even before Lent this time, thinking that this would finally be the year I finished it "on time." 

Well, I still didn't. 

But fortunately, the time I spent with Fr. Mike Schmitz doing the Bible in a Year program last year taught me to stop thinking in terms of "on time." Fr. Neuhaus has made clear that it's always a good time to think about Good Friday, and that the Crucifixion and Resurrection are each best contemplated in the light of the other anyway. They each provide the context in which the other should be understood, and they both provide the meaning for my daily life. 

So I have some of the book left, and will continue to read and share from it during this Easter season. This will probably give me time to soak in some of the content that I've rushed through in the past because I was "late" finishing up.