We had our weekly meeting for vbcc last night. I didn't feel like doing it, but I did. I had a short little internal pitty party about how no one cared about the community and it was pointless and nothing was "happening" - blah blah blah. This is my context, I assure you. So we hung out, talked, we prayed the evening office, we talked about the readings, we prayed, we received Christ in the Eucharist. This is what we do. We talked about a few things, which were good.
There was a statement that Eric Herron made on the last Conversatio podcast about how we are sort of like "Catholic Quakers" now, that stuck out as very accurate to us. I'd have to put it like this: we inhabit the liturgy as "our spiritual service" and we wait for the Lord in it. We try not to push things into happening. We don't force it. We try not to anyway. It's very hard sometimes. We have been wired to do otherwise, but now, we are in the process of being rewired. It can be a painful process.
Again, the liturgy acts as a spiritual skeleton of sorts, something that helps to keep us awake and aware of God in our everyday lives. If we enter into it, and it keeps us awake, we will be able to hear more clearly (in the context of community life). It may help us to respond to His Grace so that it activates in us what is needed for transformation.
Yes, transformation, we talked about that too. Peter brought up an observation about the reading (1 Peter 2:4-5, 9-10)...
Come to him, a living stone, rejected by human beings but chosen and precious in the sight of God,and, like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
But you are "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own, so that you may announce the praises" of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were "no people" but now you are God's people; you "had not received mercy" but now you have received mercy.
...about how we focus so much on how things are very screwed up and fallen, that we ourselves are messed up, but then what? What was the point of the whole Jesus thing anyway? Transformation! It was fixing all the screwed up mess. Of course we must realize that this takes a loooong time and doesn't quite happen as we want it to. But it is the point. We are special to God. We are His Own People now and not "no people" - that's a big leap. Good stuff for a night I didn't even feel like participating in.
Keep us awake, O Lord, so we can become more and more Your People.
"Then, if we cannot as yet think alike in all things, at least we may love alike. Herein we cannot possibly do amiss." John Wesley
"Keep your eyes on the crucifix, for Jesus without the cross
is a man without a mission, and the cross without Jesus
is a burden without a reliever." Fulton J. Sheen
"...I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be
completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self." Henri Nouwen
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