Lectio
“You who are Love itself, give me the grace of love, give me Yourself, so that all my days may finally empty into the one day of Your eternal Life.”
— Karl Rahner, S.J., Encounters with Silence
Meditatio
That the Father gives Himself to us unconditionally and without reservation, that He has done so in the Son, and that He now dwells in us as the Holy Spirit breathed into us by Christ our Lord, does not mean that we should not ask for His presence, His grace, and His love. It is not that our asking prompts or compels God to give more of Himself to us. He has given Himself to us since before we were born and will continue to do so even beyond our death. Rather, by asking Him, humbly and prayerfully, for Himself, we affirm what is already given and assent to receive Him, and all that His Spirit brings, into our hearts and lives.
Through our prayers, drawn out of us by the Spirit, we acknowledge who God is and who we are in relation to Him. We concede our smallness and His magnificence, and express in thoughts and words the innermost longing of our hearts, which is to be little in His presence, with nothing left to defend, and, as His love grows greater in us, to become not less ourselves but more. In prayer, we are given to understand what the Spirit already knows, which is that, without Him, we are nothing, but also that we are never, in fact, without Him, for He is the God who pours Himself out in and for us, from the first day of creation to the last.
In this way, we come to understand that our days are not, and never were, our own. They are, like His grace, a gift by which we come to know Him and through which we slowly come to give ourselves over to and through the love that is always giving itself over to us. Sabbath is the day we stop long enough to notice this: that all of our days were already His. Each day we are given is an invitation to ask, which is simply to admit, in thought or word, the desire that already indwells us, that all of our days empty into the one day that is God’s eternal Life.
Oratio
A Single Breath
one day
from the first
to the last
spoken
through one Word
in the beginning
now
and forever
an eternal breath
breathed out for us
breathed into us
a single exhale
a divine utterance
of “I love you”
so that we might breathe Him in
filling our lungs with Life
the Life that allows us to say
“I love you too”
from my beginning
now
and forever
let it be so
Contemplatio
This day was breathed out for you before you drew your first breath, and every breath since has been His. Nothing is required of you now but to notice the air filling your lungs. Rest in the silence, and let Him breathe Himself into you.
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 Holy Defiance: Karl Rahner and the Love That Persists in Not Understanding (Lectio Divina), which turns to another prayer from Encounters With Silence, where love grows deeper in what it cannot grasp, much as asking deepens what has already been given.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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