Lectio
“Thine Arms, then, O Jesus, are the lift which must raise me up even unto Heaven. To get there I need not grow; on the contrary, I must remain little, I must become still less.”
— Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul
Meditatio
In graced moments of perfect honesty and humility, when the Holy Spirit lifts the veil of illusion of our own self-sufficiency, we realize that the most truthful prayer we can make is one of thanks. In the light of God’s majestic presence and abundant grace shining upon us, we are given over to a moment of pure gratitude wherein we are made fully aware of our smallness and our utter dependence, and of the grandeur of His love at the very root of it.
In moments like this, where we are gifted a glimpse of powerlessness to sustain ourselves outside of God’s loving breath breathed into us and His will, which animates us, words fail us. Here, prayers of petition or intercession feel like hollow gestures, and “thank you” is all we can say or feel, and even that is not enough and too much all at the same time. And thus, even if only for a moment, we fall silent in the presence of Him whose Word created us and is creating us in this very moment.
We realize that we exist only because God wills us to exist: if the Father were to cease thinking of us, even for a moment, we would simply cease to be, because we are nothing without Him. And we realize that this same Love is lifting us, in Jesus, into His own life and into the Kingdom of Heaven. And yet, even in our nothingness without God, we are too often too much. For, even in our grateful silence before the Lord, we will try to take over that silence, barging into that secret place with ideas and agendas and demands, insisting that we can, somehow, improve upon that which God has done and continues to do.
Let us, then, pray that we can consent to remain little in His presence, and to grow smaller still, and that He may increase in us, making us more like Him and less like the selves we have created. Let us pray that we come to know how little we are, and how much we need Him to lift us up to Himself and to His Heavenly Home. And let us pray that our littleness becomes ever littler over time, until there is nothing left in us but a graced emptiness that He is already filling with His love, lifting us into His bosom, as the beloved children of God that we are.
Oratio
Carry Me Away
left still
silent
open
receiving You
embracing me
more than I can do
more than I can be
carrying me away
in my smallness
in my nothingness
in awe
of Your love for me
Contemplatio
You do not have to grow into anything to be loved this way. The smallness you work so hard to outgrow is the very place His arms reach you. Let yourself be as little as you are, be still, and let Him lift you in His own time and in His own way.
Related Scripture
“Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them.”
— Hosea 11:3
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Remembered Before We Remember: Hyperichius on Grace and the Wandering Mind (Lectio Divina), which meets the same human urge to do God’s part for Him and finds grace already ahead of us.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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