To Be Like a Child

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Litany of Humility

written by Cardinal Merry del Val
(He was accustomed to recite this prayer daily after the celebration of Holy Mass.)

O Jesus meek and humble of heart, Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed, Deliver, me, Jesus.
From the desire of being loved, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being extolled, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being honored, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being praised, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being preferred to others, Deliver me Jesus.
From the desire of being consulted, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being approved, Deliver me, Jesus.

From the fear of being humiliated, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being despised, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of suffering rebukes, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being calumniated, Deliver, me, Jesus.
From the fear of being forgotten, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being ridiculed, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being wronged, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being suspected, Deliver me, Jesus.

That others may be loved more than I, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be esteemed more than I, Jesus grant me the grace to desire it.
That in the opinion of the world, others may increase, and I may decrease, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be chosen and I set aside, Jesus grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be praised and I unnoticed, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be preferred to me in everything, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may become holier than I, provided that I become as holy as I should, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

Amen.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Gratitude

I know myself, I know the way I write, and I know this blog is going to get very, um, onerous for some readers, so I might as well start with something light. Here's something I wrote a few days ago.

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Gratitude

There's a little parable about a girl who is tired of bearing her cross. She asks God if she can change her cross. God allows her to experiment with several other crosses. Each one, she finds, is somehow wrong for her. Finally, she finds a cross that fits her shoulders. To her surprise, it is her original cross, the very cross she wanted to give up. The story I'm about to tell is a little bit like that.

When I was in college, I heard a friend of mine, a Jesuit, give a talk at a prayer session, where he shared with the audience that the one grace he had constantly prayed for in the novitiate was the grace of a happy heart. It was a grace, he said, that he had been granted.

Looking at my friend's face, I knew it was true. He really was one of the happiest people I knew.

I felt moved by his story.

And envious.

I knew I didn't have a happy heart. I had happy moments, yes, but I also often had a heavy heart.

I wondered whether I should ask God for the same grace. And so sometimes I did. "Please God, give me the grace of a happy heart," I would pray. But each time I did I wondered whether it was the grace I ought to be asking for. Whether it truly was the grace for me.

I remembered being a young philosophy major. A teacher of ours had said in class that philosophy majors could be spotted a mile away: somehow they always seemed to be not quite at home with the world. And from that discomfort sprung their questions. And from those questions sprung philosophy.

And so even moreso, as I remained a philosophy student, I envied those with happy hearts but wondered if my heart was meant to be happy.

I also envied those with innocent hearts. I knew mine was not innocent. If anything, I seemed sometimes to be uncomfortably attuned to the pain of the world, sensitive to its despair. I was often angered by its injustice. And so I also wondered if I should ask for an innocent heart.

Once, some friends of mine said that I was very generous. Perhaps I have a generous heart?, I asked myself. But again, I knew it wasn't true. I knew better than anyone how selfish my heart really was. Is.

Over the past few years, however, I've realized that as He has patiently moulded me and formed me, He has already given me the grace that He knew was for me even before I knew I desired it.

I've been blessed with the grace of a grateful heart.

For all my sinfulness, my weakness, my faults -- beneath it all He gives me the heart with which to feel how overflowing and abundant His grace continues to be. Wondrously, sublimely, He continues to bless me, and bless me again with the eyes to see.

To Be Like A Child

Why "To Be Like A Child"? Earlier this semester, I was sitting in a colleague's class, and the topic was Nietzsche. The class was passionately discussing Nietzsche's rage at ... well, at everything and everyone ... and everything and everyone that represented what he thought God represented. With Nietzsche's voice many of them were able to speak about their own rage, or skepticism, or criticism ....

Finally, I couldn't constrain myself any longer and I said, I don't understand Nietzsche. Here he is, angry at everything, skeptical about everything -- Christians, religious people, the world ... God. But really, maybe it's a lot simpler? Maybe faith is really just about surrendering to the God who loved us first. Maybe really, it's about being like a child ....

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I know I am far from being a child. But on the door of my bathroom, I had for many years (until finally the adhesive on the tape wore off and it fell), a print-out of a poem by Karl Rahner, in which I emphasized one line:

God of My Life

Only in love can I find you, my God.
In love the gates of my soul spring open,
allowing me to breathe a new air of freedom
and forget my own petty self.
In love my whole being streams forth
out of the rigid confines of narrowness and anxious self-assertion,
which makes me a prisoner of my own poverty and emptiness.
In love all the powers of my soul flow out toward you,
wanting never more to return,
but to lose themselves completely in you,
since by your love you are the inmost center of my heart,
closer to me than I am to myself.

But when I love you,
when I manage to break out of the narrow circle of self
and leave behind the restless agony of unanswered questions,
when my blinded eyes no longer look merely from afar
and from the outside upon your unapproachable brightness,
and much more when you yourself, O Incomprehensible One,
have become through love the inmost center of my life,
then I can bury myself entirely in you, O mysterious God,
and with myself all my questions.

- Karl Rahner, SJ
(emphasis added)

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As you can tell, this is going to be my faith blog. :)

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