REVERENTLY WITHIN – MARK 4:21-25
“There is nothing hidden except to be made visible;
nothing is secret except to come to light.”
These words of yours, dear Jesus,
unveil a great mystery to our eyes.
You give us a glimpse of the Great Unveiling
that will occur at the end of time.
But already now, as you say,
we are called to be as a lamp on a bushel
or as a city on a hill, sign of your love
for our brothers and sisters, thirsting for you.
But in our contemporary world, Lord,
is not our tendency exactly the opposite?
We are more often tempted to show too much,
than too little, of the deep, intimate things.
Indeed, is it not perhaps true that
the seed of our faith and the light of love
does not yet reach to the “fringes” of our world
precisely because it has not yet wholly possessed the heart?
Are we not lacking in a deep interior life,
in the mysterious abiding in the womb of prayer
which is necessary for all true, abiding fruit?
Yes, for there is an inherent law of growth,
and we forget this law so frequently:
that the deeper go the roots,
the farther stretch the branches.
We forget that a plant grows
because it first, and unceasingly,
drinks from the soil and from the sun.
And there is also a law of witness:
that the more deeply rooted my integrity,
in the hidden place of the heart, known to you alone,
the more the light within me simply cannot be hidden,
for it bursts forth from within, simply through a word,
or a gesture, or a smile, or, indeed, dear Jesus,
through those invisible ripples of grace
that reach out from my heart to touch the hearts of others.
Yes, all sacred things occur hidden behind a veil,
in the intimacy of the encounter of two alone,
in that place of mystery deeper than words or expression.
So we could just as well say:
Those things which are holy
makes themselves visible by their own power,
even when the human heart, in humility and love,
tries to keep them hidden from human eyes.
And the light of love, burning gently in the heart,
casts rays far and wide of its very nature,
provided that we shelter it, reverently,
from being snuffed out by the wind and the cold.