From our Lay Leader
In his sermon on August 2nd, Pastor Dan told us that when our lives are challenged and we most want to be in control, we must accept that “God is enough.” If we take this to heart, it means that we need nothing else on our spiritual journey. In fact, what we do bring along on our spiritual search is just needless baggage. As Meister Eckhart, the 14th century German mystic, said, “The spiritual life is more about subtraction than it is addition.”
James Finley, a Trappist monk, says this in a different way: “We are freed from the prison of our own illusions when we realize that everything is a gift” (my paraphrase).
If we accept that God is enough for us, we are freed from ourselves: from our own goals, our own aspirations and ambitions, our own meaning and purpose, our own sinful desires. That’s really what spirituality is all about: finding inner freedom.
Father Richard Rohr teaches that “Freedom comes from letting go.”
• Letting go of myself as the reference point for everything.
• Letting go of my need to place my own thoughts and feelings in the center of every conversation or difficulty.
• Letting go of my need to control and manipulate every situation, God, and others.
• Letting go of my cultural biases.
• Letting go of my fear of loss and death.
• Letting go of wanting more and better things.
• Letting go of my need to know.
• Letting go of my need to be right.
• Letting go of my need for power and control.
• Letting go of my need for safety and security.
• Letting go of my need for affection and esteem.
(Adapted from Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation, Daily Meditations, June 14, 2020)
Perhaps this sheds some light on what Jesus meant when he said, “Blessed are those who are poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” It is in emptying ourselves, letting go of everything, that we find the freedom we are looking for.
The Jesuit priest, Walter Ciszek, who spent five years in a Moscow prison and then fifteen years of hard labor in Siberian prison camps, understood this and put it into practice. He said, “The fullest freedom I had ever known, the greatest sense of security, came from abandoning my will to do only the will of God. The simple soul who each day makes a morning offering of “all the prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day”—and who then acts upon it by accepting unquestioningly and responding lovingly to all the situations of the day as truly sent by God—has perceived with an almost childlike faith the profound truth about the will of God. God’s will for us is clearly revealed in every situation of every day, if only we could learn to view all things as God sees them.”
He goes on: “The challenge lies in learning to accept this truth and act upon it, every moment of every day. The trouble is that like all great truths, it seems too simple. It is there before our noses all the time, while we look elsewhere for more subtle answers. It bears the hallmark of all divine truths, simplicity, and yet it is precisely because it seems so simple that we are prone to overlook it or ignore it in our daily lives.” Walter J. Ciszek with Daniel L. Flaherty, He Leadeth Me (1973).
Make a simple offering to God each day, giving your prayers, works, joys and sufferings to Him, and then believe: “God is enough!”