I picked up a new book yesterday, something not by Thomas Merton! aaggh! I've been meaning to get hold of something by Karl Rahner for a while now and I finally had the opportunity, and the gift certificate, to do so. I picked up a not so intimidating anthology called Spiritual Writings. Funny, I usually know within a few pages whether I'm getting along with the author of a book like this and if I'll be able to go any farther. Seems Fr. Karl and I are getting along nicely. And of course you know this is leading up to a good chunky quote which I feel will be very helpful and practical indeed for many, if not all, of us.
Look at my soul, which is virtually nothing but a street on which the world's baggage-cart rolls along with its innumerable trivialities, with its gossip and fuss, with its nosiness and empty pretension...
But how am I meant to convert this daily drudge of my neediness, how am I supposed to convert myself to the one thing needful that you are? How am I supposed to get away from daily drudge?...
...When I think of the hours I spend at your altar or saying your Church's office, then I realize that it's not worldly business that make my days a drudge, but me - I can change even these sacred actions into hours of drudgery. It's me who makes my days drudgery, not the other way around...
So then, where are you to be found, if the enjoyment of everyday makes us forget you, and if the disappointments of everyday have not yet found you?... ...My God, if we can lose you in everything - if neither prayer, nor a sacred celebration, nor the silence of the cloister, nor disillusionment about everything in general can themselves forestall this danger, then even these holy, non-everyday things still belong to the daily drudge... ...everything is daily drudge, because everything can ruin for me the one reality that is necessary, and deprive me of it: the reality that is you, my God...
But... ...if everything can be the loss of you, the One, then I must also be able to find you in everything... ...Therefore I must seek you in everything. Each day is daily drudge, and each day is your day, the hour of your grace.
I must live out the daily drudge and the day that is yours as one reality. As I turn outward to the world, I must turn inward toward you, and possess you, the only One, in everything.
I know that was lengthy but I wanted to sort of complete a thought. I found this bit very helpful for what many of us go through constantly - this struggle to be actively in God, in Christ, all the time, while also being in the world, working and paying bills and doing things which do not excite us all the time. They so often seem to cancel each other out. I think Rahner taps into something that God wants us to know so badly, that this is not true - that they do not, nor were they meant to, cancel each other out. We can be in and participate in the unitive way (the way of union with God in Christ) in the midst of all things. And in a way, it's sort of up to us whether we turn ourselves to Him in the midst of whatever life is happening, or not. He alone can make us into who we were created to be, but we still must bend our wills for it to be done. I hope this encourages us as to the possibility that resides in the daily drudge. It's there. We need to start noticing it. Grace be with us.
"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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