Each of our lives should be a new song - the ever-new song that is Christ.

This song, however, in order to be truly new, must spring from the union with Christ that is built on our very weakness, our failures, our past sins. These things help us see what we are so that we learn to rely only on grace, not on our own strength, and once we let go of them as our sustenance, they become our death, that Christ may live in us.

Every failure and every little cross help us become something new - we are cut down, ground to meal, pressed out until we are no longer recognizable, so that we can be transformed. We become new matter over which Christ can pronounce the saving words, "This is My Body." Only then can we sing, or rather, He can sing in us. No other song matters. We are all Christ, or we are nothing.

Yes, God reaches through us, sings through us, but not with disregard for us. We are not MERELY implements for His will, to be used and discarded (I know people who think like this, taking "useless servants" to the wrong conclusion). We surrender ourselves unconditionally to His will, we are ready to discard ourselves because we recognize our nothingness and sinfulness, but then we are surprised to discover that God wants to restore us, to raise us beyond ourselves, to unite Himself with us! And we may be tempted to draw back; we see this change in us, we know that it is far beyond us, that only God can accomplish this, and we are so astonished at His generosity and overabundance that we want to look away from His power and holiness in the piercing knowledge of our sinfulness and, like Peter, say, "Depart from me, Lord." But His response is always, "Fear not," and He invites us to more. Always more.

We must decrease so that He may increase, but His increasing light and love within us help us to become more ourselves - the true selves He willed us to become. In losing our lives (willingly) we are born to new life; in surrendering ourselves, we find who we are; in giving ourselves wholly, we receive our true selves in Him. We want to be lost in Him, but only in Him do we discover ourselves for the first time. Love makes us whole and free.

And this is how the whole world is made new, transformed in and through Christ - He unites with each of us to the degree that we let go of ourselves (such a vise-grip we maintain!) in a free union of wills, a union of love. In His love we are transformed and renewed, filled with truth and love, and a joy which then radiates from us to others. If only we could see the stunning radiance of the soul when it is alive in Christ because His love is alive within it! This fills us with a joy that others sense, a joy that radiates from our very center, a joy manifest in generosity and hope which spring from the love that animates and motivates us.

This joy and goodness are attractive to others, this peace is a sure sign of truth. And as we give ourselves to others, they are transformed and renewed as well.

If we live for love, we will be joy in the world.