Lectio
“We mostly spend our lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do. Craving, clutching, and fussing, on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual — even on the religious — plane, we are kept in perpetual unrest: forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be: and that Being, not wanting, having and doing, is the essence of the spiritual life.”
— Evelyn Underhill, The Spiritual Life
Meditatio
God does not desire our spirituality. Nor does He desire our religiosity. What God desires is us, and He desires that we desire Him.
He is not counting the number of days we attend Mass or the amount of money we give in the offering basket. Nor is He interested in how much we want or have or do. Instead, God wants us to attend to and to give ourselves to Him and one another. He wants us to want Him, to have Him, and to do His will, which is to love Him and each other.
But beneath all of this, God simply wants us to be. He wants us to be still. He wants us to be still and to know and to trust that He is God. He wants us to simply be His beloved and for Him to be ours.
This is what was intended in the beginning, before we hardened our hearts to Him. We were created to be. We were created to be in love. We were created by Love to be love, but we forgot, and we began to want and to have and to do, and we lost our way. But even still, no matter how far we have strayed from Him, the God I Am invites us to join Him in being and in love — to join Him in Sabbath rest.
Oratio
Help Me Let You
as I pray
crying out in anguish
the howling winds
soften their screams
somehow
You can be heard
in the silence
somehow
You can be seen
in the stillness
why am I like this
why does it hurt to be
why can I not let You love me
please God
help me to let You love me
help me to simply be
Contemplatio
The anguish you carry doesn’t disqualify you from His rest — it’s often the invitation into it. Stop straining. Let Him love you, and let that very stopping be your prayer. Let that very stopping be your Sabbath. Sit with this in silence, consenting to His presence, and let Him move in you however He wills.
Related Scripture
“So then, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God; for those who enter God’s rest also cease from their labors as God did from his.”
— Hebrews 4:9-10 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Becoming Love’s Flame: On Surrender and the Living Flame of Love (Lectio Divina), which sits with St. John of the Cross’s teaching that no amount of striving can earn what grace has already given, and asks what it looks like to stop trying and simply receive.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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