THE PASSION AND DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF THE LORD

                                                                     THE  GIFT OF SELF

"God is Love, and is therefore the Good, communicative of itself... to give of Himself is an essential movement of His Nature... His Free Will is captivated by the movement of His Love." 

Love is His Being. His Will is subject to the Self-emptying power of His Mighty Love. Wearing nothing but His cloak of Ignominy, we behold the Man of Sorrows Whose Passion reveals the depths of His Love: His Love pins Him to His Cross: In His Love He endures His loneliness, His abandonment, His isolation, and His tsunami of pain. 

                                  

                                                             LOVE IS HIS GIFT OF SELF.

                 "What power this gift has! ...It cannot fail to draw the Almighty to become one with our lowliness." 

                                                                  Our "lowliness". 

Our misery draws God... our "feeble love enslaves Him," captivates Him. 

When our free will is captivated by our desire to love Him, we begin to grow in self-knowledge.  And the awareness of our sins causes us to stumble on our own Via Dolorosa alongside our Beloved Savior this Good Friday,  When we skin our knees during our multiple falls under the weight of our pride, we are given to remember that it is Spirit Lord Who is endlessly inspiring a holy longing in our soul to pour ourselves, our will, our 'belongings', our security, into an ever-deeper self-abandonment into God's ocean of Love. 

                                                 In other words, to gift ourselves to God.

Maybe we may pause to wonder, during this Holy Week, are we too actually being invited to be so profoundly identified with our Savior, to love with His Love, to participate in His Redemptive Act of winning souls whom Jesus Lord can then give with great joy back to Our Father? To unite ourselves into Love, to give Him the total gift of 'myself'?

Could people whose lives are as ordinary as ours actually be called to such depths of holiness? Isn't that Way reserved for God's saints?

St Teresa of Avila answers our questions:

"... He didn't say, 'I will give drink to those whom I think fit for it'... He invites us all, without conditions..." 

Our great saint was teaching us that there is no two-tier holiness, that holiness is friendship with God and that He desires to call all of us His 'friend'.

 

And so we may further wonder... what measure of self should we give our Friend?

Once again, St Teresa of Jesus advises us:

"We think we are giving God everything, whereas what we are really offering Him is the revenue, or the fruits of our land while keeping the stock and the right of ownership of it in our own hands."

Perhaps these words of Teresa cause us to confront the reality that we have determinedly retained the right of ownership of everything God has given us. During our life-years, we have constructed illusions to avoid giving God the gift of self: illusions of self-importance, self-pride, self-opinion... these and many more 'selves'.  

We may have listened to and been imprisoned by the fears that the devil uses to paralyze our soul: if we give God ownership of our 'self', will He take our family, our bank account, our home, our loved ones? Our fears convince us that these losses will be the consequences of total self-surrender to Jesus Lord Whose own life and death encompassed all of these 'losses'. 

St Teresa speaks:

"He refuses to force our will. He takes what we give Him."

If all we can give Him is a mustard seed-measure of self, He grasps it with great joy because, "our feeble love enslaves Him". 

In Matthew 19, we hear Jesus Lord loving and reassuring response to our soul-destroying fears:

"...everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for 

my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life."

                                     Our God will never be outdone in generosity.

If we give Him ownership of family, He will grasp our gift and heal all the situations in our family that wound us deeply... the lost soul of a beloved brother, the illness of a grandmother, the daughter who has separated from us, the fear for a son bound over by addictions.

 

When we give over the rights of ownership to the "fruits of our land" as well as the "stock from the revenue," He will lovingly remind us that He is and always has been the CFO of our bank account and He will lead us to the purchase of a different "field" which, unlike our bank account, will not imprison our soul. It will transform our soul into the very likeness and beauty of our Savior Lord.

                           "...so that in eternal glory the Celestial Court shall marvel at the marked likeness of their features with my  Divine Countenance" (Our Lord Jesus Christ to St. Gertrude).

And while we are "still a great way off " (Luke 15:20), our Beloved Father will run all the way to meet us because He will behold in us the very Countenance of His own Son.

                   Our gift of self: the most perfect expression of love we can offer to God. 

                         

Quotations:

Blessed Marie Eugene of the Child Jesus. OCD

St. Teresa of Jesus OCD

St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face OCD

                                        

                                          

                            

--

Anna Rae-Kelly OCDS
www.annaprae.com