Surrender.
When it comes right down to it, when we pare away all the
assorted understandings and misunderstandings of it, the faith-life can be
summed up in this one word.
This one word is a challenging word. It chops and digs at
the roots of all that we are, regardless of our point along the faith-life
journey. It never leaves us. It is always present.
I think of the words of Christ as he prayed in Gethsemane.
He knew what was facing him. He knew that his Crucifixion awaited him. He
prayed,
“My Father, if it be possible,
let this chalice pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”[1]
The Apostle James exhorts Christ’s followers to be more than
casual hearers. He tells us,
“But be doers of the
word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the
word and not a doer, he is like a man who observes his natural face in a
mirror; for he observes himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was
like. But he who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and
perseveres, being no hearer that forgets but a doer that acts, he shall be
blessed in his doing.”[2]
How many times have I looked into this mirror only to walk
away to forget what I was like?
How many times have I resisted its invitation to surrender
myself more completely into the perfect liberating rule of Christ?
The whole of the Gospel can be summed up in this one word – surrender.
The whole of Christianity can be summed up in this one word –
surrender.
The whole of Saint Benedict’s instruction in the Rule can be
summed up in this same one word – surrender.
Christ comes to us in our Gospel for today saying,
“Every one then who
hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his
house upon a rock; and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew
and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on
the rock. And every one who hears these words of mine and does not do them will
be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand; and the rain fell, and
the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell;
and great was the fall of it.”[3]
My own human will, that
part of me that has often led me astray, will never be perfect. It can and will,
however, continue to be perfected as I surrender it to the will of Christ.
Nevertheless. Not as I. But as you.
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