Love Flowers When It Is Obedient
Dawn is beginning (5:30) on a mild spring morning. Holy Week is about to begin and I was never more conscious of its solemnity and its importance. I am a Christian, and a member of a Christian community. I and my brothers are to put aside everything else and recognize that we belong not to ourselves but to God in Christ. That we have vowed obedience, which is intended to unite us to Christ "obedient unto death--even the death of the Cross." That without our listening and attention and submission, in total self-renunciation and love for the Father's will, in union with Christ, our life is false and without meaning. But in so far as we desire, with Christ, that the Father's will may be done in us, as it is in heaven and in Christ, then even the smallest and most ordinary things are made holy and great. And then in all things the love of God opens and flowers, and our lives are transformed. This transformation is a manifestation and advent of God in the world.
One of the fruits of a solitary life is a sense of the absolute importance of obeying God--a sense of the need to obey and to seek His will, to choose freely to see and accept what comes from Him, not as a last resort, but as one's "daily super-substantial bread." Liberation from automatic obedience into the seriousness and gravity of a free choice to submit. But it is not easy to see always where and how!
Hard to obey when it feels like I lose everything by doing so.
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