Ah, my God, my most loving Father,
you are so beautiful, so immensely beautiful.
In your Son, the Word through whom,
beautifully, you created all things,
your Son who is the fairest of the children of men,
you are at work in our world unceasingly,
gently guiding its course through the Spirit’s Breath,
the Spirit who ever passes between the two of you.
Ah, even the tensions and tragedies of sin,
Father, you draw into your loving plan.
And our frailest efforts to discover and live,
in the liberty of humble obedience and trust,
according to the law inscribed in our hearts
and given most fully in the Gospel truth,
you use to grant us access, as children of your love,
to participating in your own guiding providence,
so that what your Son said becomes true also,
through pure grace, in us:
My Father is at work until now;
and I also am at work.
I can do nothing of my own accord,
but only what I see the Father doing;
for whatever the Father does,
that the Son does likewise.
Amazing!
Liberty and dependency, here, coincide.
The more I am simply a child
the more I am truly mature and free,
moved not by the compulsions pulling,
incessantly, from without:
the world, the devil, the flesh;
but rather I am moved freely,
spontaneously, from within,
by my own deepest truth,
but, deeper, by the truth of Christ,
in whom I live, move, and have my being.
And yet another step still
is necessary for this union,
pure gift of grace, to show its fullness:
for it is not enough to act together alone,
insofar as action is directed to some external end.
For the activity of the Son and Spirit
in this world that you have made
is simply an expression of the action of eternity,
always alive and ever flowing, full and free.
And this action itself is one, united,
with the beauty of perfect repose, eternal rest:
the simple self-giving of Father, Son, and Spirit,
within the ecstasy of endless embrace,
this Kiss of intimacy that does not,
nor ever will, come to an end.
Ah, yes, the heart is ravished
by this beauty that it glimpses,
the beauty of your own life, Trinity divine.
For what can compare with this Beauty?
And yet all beauty in this world,
however obscured by darkness and sin,
shares in this Beauty that is yours.
Here, Father, I glimpse, I know,
what it truly means to be holy,
for I see it in Christ your Son:
eternally with you, Child in the Father’s arms,
yet incarnate through love in our lowly flesh,
loving us, ardently, to the utmost, to the end,
through Eucharistic self-donation
and consummation of gift through the Cross,
breaking through the barrier of death
to burst forth in the life of Resurrection.
He, Christ, is the entirely Open One,
who has burst beyond every barrier,
becoming in himself a space of pure love:
a space of perfect acceptance of the other
and of total gift of self.
We, who have become enclosed,
isolated through sin and fear,
find him approaching us, descending,
to penetrate into our very isolation,
there, stretching out his arms upon the Cross,
allowing his Heart to be rent open completely,
opening us also in him, redeemed, joyful, and free.
And this work of grace is precisely that:
a work of pure grace.
It awakens my frail and loving cooperation,
but remains always the decisive factor,
penetrating my narrow life, expanding it,
opening it from within like a blossoming bud,
in this way to receive and give,
as I become an open one, a receptive heart,
a life transparent to divine beauty
and vibrating at the Spirit’s slightest touch,
at the mystery and beauty of brother and sister.
Eucharist, Cross, and Resurrection,
this single threefold Truth enfolds us,
present in every moment of time, mysteriously,
carrying each and all of us, in Christ,
towards the consummation of life yet to come…
To plunge myself—to let myself be plunged!–
into this Paschal Truth, this Paschal Love,
taken up into Christ, in him abiding,
and allowing him to abide in me…
abiding thus in you, Father, and you in me…
this is all, this is everything.
It is like a child or a young woman, beloved,
who, filled with fear and so many worries,
allows herself to be swept up, held,
in the arms of the one who loves her.
In this embrace all things fall away.
Nothing else matters but this embrace,
yet all things, indeed, here find a home.
Approaching the altar of the Lord,
receiving the Body and Blood into myself,
it is really I who am received into him.
I am taken up, in his all-embracing gesture,
into the inmost Heart of the Open One…
and in him, through grace, I am opened too.
As my barriers are gently dissolved
through the Love that is stronger than all,
I find myself blossoming from within,
like a flower touched by the rays of the sun.
And here, in Jesus’ own gentle, loving arms,
I find my brother, my sister…every one…
sheltered and loved by him, the perfect Lover,
as we are all, indeed, held, with him,
close to the bosom of the eternal Father,
sharing in the endless Kiss of the Holy Spirit.