Abba, Father!
I.
Abba, Father, let it be, this unspeakable mystery.
Draw me, Father, beyond this superficiality,
to the realm where all is gift,
where my heart, touched by your Beauty
within everything, yet beyond them all,
is enfolded in the dynamism of your own eternal Gift.
This is simply to allow my life,
a tiny point, an intersection of so many things,
to reach out and make contact again
with the all-enfolding circle of your Love.
Thus my life becomes a eucharist
within the mystery of your beloved Son,
a cross enclosed within a circle
—the passion of love, fidelity, prayer, work,
enfolded within the passion of the Trinity’s eternal Gift.
We glimpse this, do we not, my God?
That, in this very land of exile and fragmented love,
we are actually not far from your embrace.
What is necessary is not to ascend to some distant height,
but simply to open the mind, hands, and heart
to welcome the Love enfolding us on every side.
Yes, the invitation to intimacy and joy is always here,
pressing up close against my heart.
The challenge lies not in external things,
but in these eyes, the receptivity of this heart.
And, my dear God, in Christ you have shown, so wonderfully,
that our blindness is so easily illumined by your eternal light.
Pour it out, therefore, loving Father, into us.
Grant me to see: to see and to love,
loving because touched by the Beauty that is yours,
the Beauty that is infinitely lovable, holy, and pure.
II.
Within this circle of your love, dear God,
everything, every moment is sanctified.
And here there is simply no “cost,”
no calculation of what is entails to receive or give.
Heart to heart, speaking,
Beauty touching, wounding, and drawing the heart—
this is everything, my God.
To begin to consider and weigh the cost
is already to step away from childhood,
from the gratuitous, all-encircling gift of Love.
For this is the true meaning of sacrifice
—simply to allow the cross to stretch out
to reconnect with the Circle,
to allow the Circle to express itself within the cross.
It is nothing but an expression of love within this world,
alive in acceptance and reciprocal gift,
penetrating and transforming both suffering and joy alike.
And in this way, indeed, my God,
we can rejoice in the “cost” of gift, its value,
as the martyrs rejoiced in the opportunity
to bear witness to the immensity of your Love,
and as Christ rejoiced to draw the lines across,
enfolding us within the Circle of all-enfolding Love.
III.
The Son can do nothing on his own
—he is utterly weak, dependent, poor—
and precisely for this reason he can do all things,
what he sees you, Father, doing, guiding him hand in hand,
Heart in Heart, in the Beauty of your paternal Love.
So it is with us, my God,
who are touched by the light
shining through his radiant breast.
Leaning against this loving Heart within his breast,
as he gives himself in the Holy Eucharist,
we glimpse, beyond the cross, and enfolding it,
the ravishing beauty of the Circle of your Love.
And we are asked only to live,
in childlike simplicity and trust,
within his own childlike relationship with you.
Thus the eucharist of our own life becomes
an unceasing acceptance of your gratuitous love,
and the flowing forth of this love into us,
spreading out to others in every moment too
—“love one another as I have loved you”—
and, finally, its surging back to you, my God,
to rest forever in the encircling arms of your embrace.