Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Pope St Pius X (1835-1914)

Readings of the Day
RB: Ch 64:7-22
Mass: Ezk 28:1-10; Resp Ps (Dt 32); Mt 19:23-30


We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us?


My response to Peter: There is always something else to rid ourselves of, to give up. Put more eloquently, Caryll Houselander, in the beginning pages of The Reed of God, writes of creating what she calls virginal emptiness.  About contemplation and making space for an emptiness in ourselves, she writes: At the beginning it will be necessary for each individual to discard deliberately all the trifling unnecessary things in his life, all the hard blocks and congestion; not necessarily to discard all his interests forever, but at least once to stop still, and having prayed for courage, to visualise himself without all the extras, escapes, and interests other than Love in his life; to see ourselves as if we had just come from God's hand and had gathered nothing to ourselves yet, to discover just what shape is the virginal emptiness of our own being, and of what material we are made

It is beautiful, this virginal emptiness, to be still and let God fill me with LOVE. What do I look like without all the things I have accumulated, all the trappings?

Houselander continues, We can accept and seize upon the fact that what we are at this moment, young or old, strong or weak, mild or passionate, beautiful or ugly, clever or stupid, is planned to be like that. Whatever we are gives form to the emptiness in us which can only be filled by God and which God is even now waiting to fill.

So, what will there be for us?

FILL US AT DAYBREAK WITH YOUR LOVE, O LORD, THAT ALL OUR DAYS WE MAY SING FOR JOY.
(Ps 90:14)

Pope St Pius X, pray for us.





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