How can new life be breathed into what seems to so many to be boring or obsolete? How can we rekindle the sense of mystery and majesty, enthusiasm for the most essential things, a sense of awe and wonder?

Not by over-explanation or hyper-analysis, certainly. The only words that might spark a fire are those that capture and hold out the Light as it is. Poetry is all I know.

But beyond words there are concrete signs which can shed light on the deepest meanings of the liturgy. But what can draw the distracted attention of so many to these silent things? What can make this thanksgiving, consecration, memorial, and offering VITAL to people who seem interested only in themselves and their own image? How, for example, can the altar itself arouse the wonder that it should? What will help us recognize and appreciate the altar as a sign of the sacrifice of the cross, the table of the Eucharistic meal, the symbol of the tomb left empty by the Risen One?

This seems to me to be an urgent need today - to somehow refocus attention toward Christ's Presence among us, toward contemplative adoration, to allow Him to reveal His Light and Presence in Word and Sacrament, to somehow encourage this dynamic of the people waiting on, expecting, encountering Him personally.

How can our gaze and our hearts be directed toward Him?
How can we be opened up to transcendence?

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.

Sometimes, we want to escape the cross, but why? We should be careful what we ask for.
If we are called to suffer with Him (and we all are), how will we bear it if we waste energy trying to run from it, even if that seems deceptively like survival? How will we save others, if in hidden ways we are concerned with saving ourselves? How will we finally die to ourselves if we try to escape those small daily deaths from His Hand?

We may at times ask to be freed of some suffering, but God, in His mercy, often does not give us what we ask for. He does not relieve us of the darkness; He rather honors our intellectual assent to suffering and ignores our cries of weakness. He keeps us safe and protected under the shadow of the cross, knowing we would suffer even more if we were to step out from under it, exposed and regretting our rejection of an unspoken covenant. He refuses to let us dishonor Christ by our rejection of these small sharings in His suffering, insisting instead that we learn the lesson in them, that we take another step toward Him in our need to lean on Him. Not another step away.The darknesses in which we find ourselves can be profound. There are subtleties in which discernment is impossible without grace; obvious tests are easier to pass, but these attacks can disorient and stun beyond our resolve. We sometimes feel we have fallen so far we cannot remember which way is up. The School of Love is a difficult one.

But we can learn from these failures, if we are willing to face them. God not only forgives our failures, but uses them to show us what we are, teach us what we must do to be free, and draw us closer to Him by degrees. He uses mud to cure the blind, and the newly-sighted have much reason to rejoice. We will again rejoice.We must beg for the grace to to recall that what we FEEL has no affect on what IS. If prayer feels distracted and worthless, it may yet be pleasing to Him. If we feel desolate and confused, we can still be used by Him. Feeling far from Him does not mean He is far from us. He does His best work when we're not looking.

We must ask for the grace to continue to say "yes" when saying "no" seems so harmless in the short run. Crouched in our dark corners, seeing only our own pain, our burdens appear beyond our own strength. But when we break out of our self-centered preoccupation and remember to look up at the Cross, we see that the true weight of whatever He asks us to bear is pitifully small, and we know (sometimes feebly) that He is bearing it with us.

This should bring us peace, even in turmoil and darkness. Our hearts are restless until they rest in Him, and He cannot abide in a restless heart. So we must ask Him to quiet us.

Benedikt Gott Geschikt

"The just...planted in the house of the Lord,
will flourish...still bearing fruit when they are old,
still full of sap, still green, to proclaim that the Lord is just."
(Psalm 92)

On the wave of a hope-tempered grief,
under the solemn weight of history they bear,
115 are gathered, equal
votes, beseeching and discerning who among them
will next bind and loose, feed the lambs, guide
the journeying people of God.
Who will fill the vacant seat?
Among them, a humble laborer,
content to labor in the peace of the shadows
of the vineyard for the Master he loves,
to study and speak the truth, as one enriching earth,
that others may be free.
But God, Hidden Mystery, ever-Gift,
has a Plan beyond our plans. He is calling this one
from the heart of the vineyard into the eye of the world.
On the 77th call of his name, while others
draw in breath at the recognition that one
is now chosen out of them, that
suddenly one is no longer equal, that
the Spirit is ever at work to surprise,
this one is alone.
With face in hands, alone for a moment
in his awe, holding his bewilderment
before the One he loves, he surrenders himself anew,
entrusts this entrustment
with an exhalation,“Lord, Master, you are really calling me.
You are entrusting
the keys to these hands. Thy will, Thy will,
I want only Thy will.
I will not be afraid.
You can do all things. Even this.
I will serve. I will serve your servants.
With Your strength, with all of me,
I will serve until You call me Home.
Accepto. Accepto.”
Strengthened by trust in Mercy and sustained
by the memory of hisGreat Friend, recently entombed,
knowing beyond any hesitation that
God can do all things, he proclaims, with all of him:
Accepto. Vocabor Benedictum.
And in that word
(always, our own word is necessary
to bring His truth into play,
His will into action),
he becomes other;
he is no longer one among equals.
The seat is no longer vacant.
And in that word, he is strengthened by fresh grace.
He views the vineyard froma new position; it is the same
vineyard, requires the same labor, but now
he must lead.
He bears the yoke of Christ anew.
New. He makes all things new.
He makes all things possible, and all things new.
And with our FIAT,
He makes us what He calls us to be.

Good morning