A Blessed Triduum!
These “holy” days we contemplate the mystery of God’s LOVE, God’s self-gift in Jesus. This is holiness and “real holiness doesn’t feel like holiness; it just feels like you’re dying. It feels like you’re losing it. And you are! Every time you love someone, you have agreed for a part of you to die. You will soon be asked to let go of some part of your false self, which you foolishly thought was permanent, important, and essential!
You know God is doing this in you and with you when you can somehow smile and trust that what you lost was something you did not need anyway. In fact, it got in the way of what was real.
Many of us were taught to say no without the deep joy of yes. We were trained to put up with all the “dying” and just stand up to face things bravely. Saying no to the self does not necessarily please God or please anybody. There is too much resentment and self-pity involved. When God, by love and freedom, can create a joyous yes inside of you—so much so that you can absorb the usual ‘no’s—then it is God’s full work. The first might be resentful dieting; the second is a spiritual banquet.” (An extract from Richard Rohr)
These last three days of the Holy week, may we hear deeply, the invitation to allow the God within to live in us; may we recognize the beauty of being “given” for the other as the only way to ‘put on the mind and heart of Christ’; may we embrace the little deaths so as to allow something bigger and greater to be born in us and through us!