Jesus is walking down the road and he is aware someone is following him. He does not turn around. Instead, he continues to allow these men to follow him. After a while, Jesus turns and looks the men in the eyes and says: "So how is it going for you?" "What are you seeking?" (Paraphrased from Living the God-Breathed Life, by Thom Gardner)
When I first read Jesus' comment to his future disciples, "So how is it going?", I stopped dead in my tracks. These few words touched the core of my being like a piercing light. I cannot tell you how many times I have read or though of those words, and each time I go back to Jesus and say, "Come, Jesus. Show me the way." He knows me better than I know myself.
When I read the Wedding Feast at Cana (John 2:1-12), my imagination took me to a great celebration of laughter, food, connection with friends and strangers, and the consumption of wine -- which heightens any celebration. Mary recognized that the jars of wine were empty. Amazingly, it was a woman who sensed the longing for MORE in the human heart.
I cannot help but think about the empty wine jars as symbols of myself as an empty vessel in search of that "SOMETHING" to fill my life. How often are we those seekers of that "SOMETHING" like the empty jar?
As I have come to embrace my emptiness without running from it, I have discovered, like John the Baptist, that Jesus must increase and I must decrease. THE EMPTY JAR IS NOW BEING FILLED WITH THE LIFE OF CHRIST. Imagine each of us being filled to the brim with this profound and amazing grace and the LIFE OF CHRIST! Our blindness becomes the vision of Jesus. Our deafness becomes his capacity to hear the cry of the poor. Our lameness is Jesus extending his hand for us to stand up with courage and walk into the future.
He will reveal his way for us during this Chapter. He will, if we but listen to him and listen with a surrendering YES. Chapter is a time of awakening, a time of renewal, a time to ponder the questions of Jesus, individually and collectively -- "So how is it going?" "What are we seeking?" Could the answer be right in front of us in our grace-filled identity -- CHRISTIAN CHARITY, that is, Christ's love? Is Jesus inviting us to delve deeply into that new life-giving wine? Paraphrasing the words of Carole Marie Kelly: When we discover a new level of existence and the life of the Word of God . . . we know we have found our true home (A Handful of Fire: Praying Contemplatively with Scripture).
- Sister Susan ministers at St. Mary Manor (Lansdale, PA).
_________________________
The Sisters of Christian Charity of the North American Eastern Province will hold our Provincial Chapter from February 14-18, 2019. Please join us in praying the prayer for our Provincial Chapter.
No comments:
Post a Comment