I realized that healing begins with our taking our pain out of its diabolic isolation and seeing that whatever we suffer, we suffer it in communion with all of humanity, and yes, all of creation. In so doing, we become participants in the great battle against the powers of darkness. Our little lives participate in something larger.
When the younger son was no longer considered a human being by the people around him, he felt the profundity of his isolation, the deepest loneliness one can experience. He was truly lost, and it was this complete lostness that brought him to his senses.
Becoming like the heavenly Father is not just one important aspect of Jesus’ teaching, it is the very heart of his message.
When we worry, we have our hearts in the wrong place.
When we see ourselves in a relationship of love with God, there is always something of a lover’s dilemma, a struggle to give and receive, to trust and obey the call.
The younger son’s return takes place in the very moment that he reclaims his sonship, even though he has lost all the dignity that belongs to it. In fact, it was the loss of everything that brought him to the bottom line of his identity. He hit the bedrock of his sonship. In retrospect, it seems that the prodigal had to lose everything to come into touch with the ground of his being.
God has created you and me with a heart that only God’s love can satisfy. And every other love will be partial, will be real, but limited, will be painful. And if we are willing to let the pain prune us, to give us a deeper sense of our belovedness, then we can be as free as Jesus and walk on this world and proclaim God’s first love, wherever we go.2.
The parable that Rembrandt painted might well be called “The Parable of the Lost Sons.” Not only did the younger son, who left home to look for freedom and happiness in a distant country, get lost, but the one who stayed home also became a lost man. Exteriorly he did all the things a good son is supposed to do, but, interiorly, he wandered away from his father. He did his duty, worked hard every day, and fulfilled all his obligations but became increasingly unhappy and unfree.
We are called to witness, always with our lives and sometimes with our words, to the great things God has done for us.
God is the father who watches and waits for his children, runs out to meet them, embraces them, pleads with them, begs and urges them to come home.
You feel overwhelmed by distractions, fantasies, the disturbing desire to throw yourself into the world of pleasure. But you know already that you will not find there an answer to your deepest question. Nor does the answer lie in rehashing old events, or in guilt or shame. All of that makes you dissipate yourself and leave the rock on which your house is built.
Becoming a child is living toward a second innocence: not the innocence of the newborn infant, but the innocence that is reached through conscious choices.
Many consumerist economies stay afloat by manipulating the low self-esteem of their consumers and by creating spiritual expectations through material means.
Life in the Spirit of Jesus is therefore a life in which Jesus’ coming into the world – his incarnation, his death, and resurrection – is lived out by those who have entered into the same obedient relationship to the Father which marked Jesus’ own life. Having become sons and daughters as Jesus was Son, our lives become a continuation of Jesus’ mission.
Jesus goes up onto the mountain, gathers his disciples around him, and says: “How blessed are the poor, the gentle, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for uprightness, the merciful, the pure of heart, the peacemakers, and those who are persecuted in the cause of uprightness.” These words present a portrait of the child of God. It is a self-portrait of Jesus, the Beloved Son.
What I do know with unwavering certainty is the heart of the father. It is a heart of limitless mercy.
The loud, boisterous noises of the world make us deaf to the soft, gentle, and loving voice of God.
Our individual as well as communal lives are so deeply molded by our worries about tomorrow that today hardly can be experienced.
I can only be healed from above, from where God reaches down. What is impossible for me is possible for God. “With God, everything is possible.
I have always been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted; then I realized that the interruptions were my work.