Carlo Carretto wrote:
Here is the miracle of love: to discover that all creation is one, flung out into space by a God who is a Father, and that if you present yourself to it as he does - unarmed and full of peace - creation will recognize you and meet you with a smile.He also wrote this about prayer:
I, Francis
...as long as we pray only when and how we want to, our life of prayer is bound to be unreal. It will run in fits and starts. The slightest upset - even a toothache - will be enough to destroy the whole edifice of our prayer life.
You must strip your prayers... You must simplify, de-intellectualize. Put yourself in front of Jesus as a poor man: not with any big ideas, but with living faith. Remain motionless in an act of love before the Father. Don't try to reach God with your understanding; that is impossible. Reach him in love; that is possible.
from Michael L. Gaudoin-Parker, The Real Presence through the Ages
And Jesus, when they asked him which was the greatest commandment, replied:
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: "You shall love your neighbour as yourself." (Matthew 22.37-40)Love. That is all there is, finally. When everything else has failed, love remains. And all things lead back to love. St Paul saw this perfectly: not only in 1 Corinthians 13.13 ("...the greatest of these is love"), but so strongly in Romans 8. The whole chapter, beginning, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus..." through all the statements about prayer and the Spirit, and the cry of assurance that begins at v28, leads on finally to "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Prayer is love. To "Pray always" (Luke 18.1) is to love always. The Jesus Prayer, once it becomes by use bedded into the heart, begins to sing gently under all our thoughts and all our words, fulfilling all but unconsciously that injunction of Paul's to "pray without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 15.17).
Micah recorded the Lord as saying, "what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." (6.8) To love mercy. To love as prayer, and that prayer a prayer for mercy, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner..."
Annie Dillard:
"Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in his holy place?" [Psalm 24.3] There is no one but us. There is no one to send, nor a clean hand, nor a pure heart on the face of the earth, nor in the earth, but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the notion that we have come at an awkward time, that our innocent fathers are all dead - as if innocence had ever been - and our children busy and troubled, and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready, having each of us chosen wrongly, made a false start, failed, yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures, and grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, weak, and involved. But there is no one but us. There never has been.And Jesus gave us those two commandments, to love our Lord and to love each other; and our love can surely only truly be shown, as is Jesus' for us, as mercy. Lord Jesus, have mercy - on us and through us - use our love and our prayer as you will, for your mercy, in your Spirit. "Lord here I am - send me! Have mercy on me, a sinner..."
Holy the Firm
[Reblogged, slightly edited, from an earlier post, 2006]
2 comments:
Carretto's words, as always, are potent and quietly powerful. He has this irenic unforgettability to his writing! When he writes, simplify, de-intellectualise, come before Jesus as a poor soul, with no big ideas, I think of Psalm 131, which I was struggling to remember tonight: "I do not exercise myself in great matters, or in things that are too high for me. But I have quieted my soul, as a child at his mother's breast."
I must re-read Dillard's words. I've absorbed them imperfectly. But she seems to be saying something vital, something alive.
I have a dear friend who tells me he begins every day (before stepping out of bed) with the prayer, "Here I am, God!"
And here we are! Thank you as always for your posts. They sustain and nourish and edify and delight.
Oh, Psalm 131! There's a Psalm I carry with me, too. And recently there's been added to it Proverbs 20.24, "All our steps are ordered by the Lord; how then can we understand our own ways?"
The Dillard quote is very dense. She has packed it so tightly that it's almost impossible to paraphrase, even to oneself. It just is what it is, and needs lots of re-reading, as you say.
Thank you, as always, Thomas, for your thoughtful comments on this and the previous post. Very encouraging. And I love your friend's greeting to his Lord in the morning - that's a classic. Thank you!
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