Daybreaks: Daily Reflections for Lent & Easter

by Ron Rolheiser, OMI

“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.
Live as children of light.”

(EPHESIANS 5:8)

“Imagine yourself lying in bed some night. You have just had a very good time of prayer and are flooded with feelings and images about God. You have strong, clear feelings that God exists. On that particular evening you have no faith doubts; you can feel the existence of God. 

Now, imagine another night, a darker one. You wake up from a fitful sleep and are overwhelmed by the sense that you don’t believe in God. You try to convince yourself that you still believe, but you cannot. Every attempt to imagine that God exists and to feel his presence comes up empty. You feel an overwhelming emptiness inside because of that feeling. Try as you might, you cannot shake the feeling that you no longer believe. Try as you might, you can no longer regain the solid ground on which you once stood. Try as you might, you can no longer make yourself feel the existence of God.    

Does this mean that on one of these nights you have a strong faith and on the other you have a weak one? Not necessarily. It can just as easily mean that on one night you have a strong imagination and on the other you have a weak one. On one night you can imagine the presence of God and on the other night you cannot. Imagination isn’t faith.

We all have had the experience of being inside of certain commitments (marriage, family, church) where, at times, our heads and our hearts are not there, but we are there! The head tells us this doesn’t make sense; the heart lacks the proper warm feelings to keep us there. But we remain there, held by something deeper, something beyond what we can explain or feel. This is where faith lives, and this is what faith means. 

For long periods, St. Teresa of Calcutta suffered anguish inside of her head and heart every time she tried to imagine the existence of God. Yet by every indication she lived her whole life in function of God’s existence. Her problem was with the limits and poverty of the human imagination. Simply put, she couldn’t picture how God exists. 

But nobody can because the finite can never picture the infinite, though it can sense it and know it in ways beyond what the head can imagine, and the heart can feel.  

Not being able to imagine God’s existence is not the same thing as not believing. Our actions are always a more accurate indication of faith than are any of our feelings about God” (31).   

Daybreaks: Daily Reflections for Lent & Easter
by Ron Rolheiser, OMI

“Who is wise enough to understand these things?
Who is intelligent enough to know them?
Straight are the paths of the Lord,
the just walk in them,
but sinners stumble in them”.

(HOSEA 14:10)

If the Gospel of John is to be believed – and it is – Jesus judges no one. God judges no one.

That needs to be put into context. It doesn’t mean there aren’t any moral judgments and that our actions are indifferent to moral scrutiny. There is judgment, except it doesn’t work the way it is fantasized inside the popular mind. According to what Jesus is quoted as saying in John’s Gospel, judgment works this way: God’s light, God’s truth, and God’s spirit come into the world. We then judge ourselves according to how we live in the face of them: God’s light has come into the world, but we can choose to live in darkness. That’s our decision, our judgment. God’s truth has been revealed, but we can choose to live in falsehood, in lies. That’s our decision, our judgment to make.

So then, this is how judgment happens: God’s spirit (charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness, and chastity) has been revealed. We can choose to live inside the virtues of that spirit, or we can choose to live instead inside their opposites (self-indulgence, sexual vice, rivalry, antagonism, bad temper, quarrels, drunkenness, and factionalism).
 

One choice leads to a life with God, the other leads away from God. And that choice is ours to make. It doesn’t come from the outside. We judge ourselves. God judges no one. God doesn’t need to” (28).

Daybreaks: Daily Reflections for Lent & Easter

by Ron Rolheiser, OMI

“When your days have been completed and you rest with your ancestors,
I will raise up your offspring after you,
sprung from your loins,
and I will establish his kingdom.”

(2 SAMUEL 7:12)

“Someday you will have to face your Maker! We’ve all heard that phrase. The hour will come when we will stand before God with no place to hide, no room to rationalize, and no excuses to offer for our weaknesses and sin. We will stand in a searing light, naked and exposed, and all we ever did, good and bad, will stand with us in that light. That prospect, however vaguely felt, makes for a dark corner in every person’s mind.

But searing judgment of our souls is meant to be a daily occurrence, not a single traumatic moment at the end of our lives. We are meant to bring ourselves, with all our complexities and weaknesses, into God’s full light every day. Genuine prayer brings us into that searing light.   

We are meant to face God like this every day, not just at the moment of our death. So we should set aside time each day to put ourselves into God’s presence without words and without images, where – naked, stripped of everything, silent, exposed, hiding nothing, completely vulnerable – we simply sit, full face, before God’s judgment and mercy.
 

By doing this, we will preempt any traumatic encounter at the time of our death and, more importantly, we will begin – here and now – to enjoy more fully God’s emphatic embrace” (27).