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A Sagely Word
Let us then together decide to make every day one of uninterrupted unification. Let us awaken in the morning in His love, and offer ourselves to His love the whole day. This means, follow the will of God, and live under His eyes, with Him, in Him, and for Him alone. Let us offer ourselves to Him in every moment, in the way that He wants. And when the evening comes, after a dialogue of love which never stopped in our hearts, we will fall asleep in His love.
*Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity (1880-1906) was told by her mother, "You will either be a terror or a saint." Elizabeth was a stubborn little girl and with a will of iron. She demanded her way, having the military spirit of her ancestors. She was a problem child, until the time of her first Holy Communion. Then, she decided, with her iron will, to overcome her stubbornness and become a saint. On November 25th, the Feast of Christ the King, 1984, the Pope beatified Elizabeth Catez, better known as Elizabeth of the Trinity. Elizabeth is one of the great mystics and spiritual writers in the history of the Church, though her life was short on this earth.
Commentary
This writing integrates varied elements and may appear disjointed to you. However, please read it all, seeking to see the Message I have tried to thread through the whole.
A reason we need to keep returning to this Moment, the “uninterrupted unification” with God, spoken of by Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity, is that returning nurtures humility in relationship with Love. Each time we return to this Moment, we return to a shared vulnerability with others.
This shared vulnerability is part of participating in Love with all others, for it means sharing the vulnerability of God, who opens Mystery to the frailties and uncertainties, frustrations and trials, in time. Humbleness leads our returning; our returning leads to a deeper, richer experience of humbleness.
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As we surrender into this naked openness, we find the peace that passes understanding, peace that can never be found in acquisition of materiality or power over others, or control through seeking to manipulate Mystery to domesticated felt needs. Surrender, abdication to God, what Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity calls to “live under His eyes, in Him, and for Him,” is the only Way to true peace among us, for such openness is the faithful risking of Love for the sake of Love alone.
James Finely, in Christian Meditation, writes, “And the more we slow down to ponder what simply is, the more we begin to understand that a great deal of our confusion arises from assuming that we understand things we do not understand at all.” Humility pertains to knowledge or, rather, lack of knowing. We can call this attitude of not knowing simply not-knowing.
Of course, we might resist admtting that we, whether we consider ourselves smart or not, have some intellectual arrogance. This intellectual arrogance, this seeking to know what cannot be known, is resistance to the vulnerability of sharing in accepting the limitations of human reason.
All words, images, ideas, and symbols arise out of a social construct of Reality. We cannot return to modernism, when we assumed that what we thought equals what is, to Reality. We treated the map like Reality and, thereby, confused the two. However, neither do we need to become nihilists, skeptics, or agnostics, for the map is part of Reality. The map itself can point us beyond itself to the shared life of surrender in Love.
Radical pluralism, however, so common, it seems, in post-modernism, abdicates the responsibility of knowing, and it melts down certainty to whatever one wants to believe; essentially, whatever feels right. This is profoundly selfish, preferring to live in a world of radical relativism without restraint, claiming that to love means to tolerate all self-interest. Such so-called freedom is a denial of accountability, an orge of self-interest.
Radical pluralists have abdicated the right and need to believe, to set boundaries. Radical pluralism is an abdication of the responsibility to believe in boundaries and the social implications consequent to the lack of belief. Radical pluralism is a contortion of unity-in-diversity, and this latter way is a way of Love. Radical pluralism, not fundamentlism, is the chief foe to healthy pluralism.
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