By Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ
Who can know God’s counsel, or who can conceive what
the LORD intends? For the deliberations
of mortals are timid, and unsure are our plans.
For the corruptible body burdens the soul and the earthen shelter weighs
down the mind that has many concerns. Wisdom 9:13-15
Perhaps this is why he was away from you for a while, that
you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a
brother, beloved especially to me, but even more so to you, as a man and in the
Lord. So if you regard me as a partner, welcome him as you would me.
Philemon 12-15
“If anyone comes to me without hating his father and
mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own
life, he cannot be my disciple.
Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me
cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:26-27
cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:26-27
Piety
Our
relationship to God is our piety. Our
bodies can lock our souls into the constrictions of human weakness. Our souls are meant to be able to fly with
the wings of the angels that see God and allow God’s possibilities to be one’s
own. Piety is seen in the wisdom that is
sent from on high. The many concerns of
the body that can wear the mind down are set free by the boldness that comes
from the inspirations of the spirit. God gives us wisdom in his holy spirit that
comes from on high. In every age, the
thousand years are reduced to our moment in the love of God that prayer gives
birth to in our piety. Wisdom allows us
to number our days aright in the love of God touched again and again by our
prayer.
Study
God sends
people into our lives that allow us to find the road God has for us in the
straight and the narrow path that our God-friends walk with us. Paul teaches us how to keep the people in our
faith journey free. He returns Onesimus,
a slave of his friends, to them so that the good they do for him might be
unforced. He returns a brother rather
than a slave by leaving them the freedom to regard Paul as a partner in his
work in the Lord. How we make the Lord
the center of our life so that we love the Lord with our whole being, with our
entire mind and our heart and soul, is the work of a lifetime. All our blood relatives are part of who we
are. Yet we are called to surrender all
to the service of God. Our first item in the business of life is our
own salvation. God‘s love ripples out
from that. We cannot put others before
our own salvation in the service of God.
He calls us to make him the center of our lives. Then we can know the freedom to give our
lives for the sake of his people.
Action
We serve the
Lord best by carrying our own crosses. God
gives us helpers in his work of salvation.
We are meant to be his hands and his feet in the work we do in his name. Letting the Lord work 100 percent in what we
do is the Contemplative-in-Action grace.
It does not exclude our having helpers to do his work. We do what is possible for us to do. We work at renouncing all our possessions in
the name of the Lord. Christ gave up
being God for our sake so that we would know how to reach his Father by doing
his work. He calls us to marshal all our energies to be
his presence in all that we would do in his name.
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