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Opening Prayer
Ancient Prayer of the Katha Upanishad (ca. 1400 BCE)
Oh Almighty! May he protect all of us!
May he cause us to enjoy!
May we acquire strength together!
May our knowledge become brilliant!
May we not hate each other!
Oh Almighty! May there be peace! Peace! Peace! Everywhere.
Oh Almighty! May everybody be happy!
May we be free from ailments!
May we see what is auspicious!
May no one be subject to miseries!
Oh Almighty! May there be peace! Peace! Peace! Everywhere.
(www.worldprayers.org)
Quotes: The Ecstasy of Love
All love has its own power nor can love in the soul of the lover be idle; it necessarily urges on. Do you wish to know the quality of love? See where it leads. (St. Augustine, “Psalm 121: The Ecstasy of Love, in Augustine of Hippo: Selected Writings, The Classics of Western Spirituality)
Comments
Love is necessarily expansive, always leading onward to where one has never been, to where a community has never been. The new terrain, inner and outer, is where Love leads. Love does not seek first to conserve, but to expand, explore. Love seeks the greater freedom beyond the freedom of yesterday. Love seeks new ground to walk upon. Love sees in the flight over the precipice the never-before breaking in. While persons acting from un-Love resists such expansiveness, seeing the chaos it engenders as too uncomfortable to bear and, often, evidence of error, Love says, “Those who are lovers, are beloveds, I, Love, lead on.”
And there is a sure difference between Love and un-Love. Un-Love is restrictive, always seeking to guard where one has been, either as person or community. Un-Love, seeking to “protect” itself from abandonment to Spirit, will seek to influence through pious and self-righteous word and act for other persons to remain in the prison of a past that was once free. But a past once free becomes a prison to escape, for Love says, “I lead on, I lead on.”
In any community, for example, there are two energies. One is centripetal, one is centrifugal. The first pulls inward, the second pushes outward. The first turns in on itself, the second opens out to the outside.
God seeks us to be persons and communities of centripetal Life. There are persons and movements who will seek to discourage such, claiming a past or present is the most holy ground, the place of faithfulness. These are persons of un-Love to the extent they turn inward and discourage other persons from turning outward and going onward.
St. Augustine says wisely that this Love “urges on.” However, we cannot decide where this Love will lead us or what shape this Love will take, not in any preciseness. For, we are servants of Love, or we are not being in Love.
I have yet, for example, to be, as member or pastor, in a church open to this Love. I have been blessed to be among persons in churches and serve them as pastor who are being urged on in Love. However, the energy of openness they bring is often negated for the whole community by a few or minority who bring a powerful energy of centrifugal force. This should not be, when Love is such a more powerful force.
However, even within systems where I have seen the over-all congregation guided by a socialized fellowship over Love, I have seen Love operative in the lives of those who where ready to receive it. Therefore, the giving of Love, even in systems guided by personal and political agendas, is a place Love still operates and despite the un-Love.
Therefore, what shall we do, seeing the forces of un-Love are so apparently successful? And seeing that those parading such use the very tenets of faith and the name of “God” to block the free operations of the Spirit and the expansion of the Church to the outside in true Love, and not just seeking to shape the world in its own image? Each day acknowledge the dignity and vocation of being a man or woman of Love. Love begins in you, daily, and the un-Love shall not deter from the joy and celebration of that Love and daily and nightly. And, finally, rejoice that the religion of "pious" un-Love shall one day bow to Love, and every limitation offered in the name of “God” shall surrender to the Grace that urges the Universe toward a new heavens and new earth, when never again shall the forces of conventional piety wield religion and politics to block the movements of the Word, Who is Freedom.
Reflection
Are you tending toward closing in on yourself or opening outward to the world of humans and other creatures?
Is the faith community you belong to evidencing that it is opening outward in Love or turning inward on itself in un-Love?
Was and is Jesus a centripetal or centrifugal Presence?
Evaluate the following statement: A faith community that is not turning outward in compassion to the world cannot be following Christ, but must be following itself, religion, or something else?
What does it mean that Love “urges on”? How have you experienced this in your life? … in your relationships with others? Have you ever been in conflict with family, physical or spiritual, through your opening outward in Love?
Spiritual Exercise
Reflect over your life. What person most helped you to open up into a greater freedom outside yourself or your own culture, church, religion, ethnic group, …? Give thanks for that person.
Go to www.compassion.net to read about sponsoring, in the name of Jesus, children living in poverty, by means of Compassion International. Thanks! Brian K. Wilcox
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