| |
B)
The meditations on sin
The Principle and
Foundation offers us a framework for the meditations on sin. Each
one of us has been created by a loving God to give Him glory and
to love Him as He loves us. It is important for the Prayer
Companion to see the human person with an integrated vision - the
human person, with its wounds and deep tendencies for which the
person may not be responsible, but also with its heart which is
the home of Faith, Hope and Love for which the person should
always be responsible. God loves each one of us and calls us to a
glorious life in His Spirit. God works in and transforms us humans
by the Spirit who dwells in our hearts.
We can distinguish
three steps on the way to understand sin in the context of our
moral freedom and responsibility:
1) Our deep wounds,
2) Our ordinate and inordinate tendencies,
3) Our relationship with God.
1) Our deep wounds.
We can easily hurt ourselves or each other. Our imagination can
seduce us. Our drive and selfishness can attract us to the way of
egoism. Shameful humiliations and injustices can poison our hearts
with hatred and resentment. Passionate love can blind us to the
point of giving up studies, family, purity and Religion. Pride and
vainglory can make us look down on others, isolating us in a
sterile egoism. Self-imposed ideals can burn us out.
We can give up and
think: "that is the way I am". Maybe by doing this our heart stops
hurting. But we lose our hope. Under the light of God's vocation
and love we become aware of our wounds and how much they have
destroyed our beauty, goodness and dignity. One retreatant said at
the end of the retreat: "When I came here three days ago I did not
realize how much healing I needed".
2) Our tendencies
both ordinate and inordinate. It is not easy to become aware
of our own tendencies. When we look at ourselves through the eyes
of people around us, we might not find any reason to worry. But if
we compare ourselves with the purity of heart and loving
generosity of Jesus and Mary, then we start to see how unloving,
how impure we are. Even worse, we seem to be bound by desires and
needs we do not control. It seems that our fears, our emotional
paralysis, even our sinful behaviour, escape our control. They
seem to have deep roots we do not see clearly.
With the Lord's help
we will discover deep in our hearts, at the root of all other
tendencies, the basic tendency to "self interest". This basic
tendency might express itself in compulsive needs or aspirations
which will often be inordinate, such as anger, wrong sexual
behaviour, compulsive eating or drinking. In fact the "self
interest" need expresses itself not only in sinful actions or
tendencies but also in other areas: how we face problems, our
behaviour in success or failure, how we treat our intimate
friends, what we do each time we are called to deny our own will,
interest and pride.
3) "THE HEART": our
gift of faith, hope and love. Deeper than our wounds and
stronger than our tendencies there is in each one of us "a heart".
In this context the heart is not only the centre of affection. By
"heart" we mean the very core of our being where we allow somebody
to be the source of meaning in the present, the horizon of hope
for the future and the loving object of what we are and do. We can
place our hearts on the god of money and power, on a person we
idolize or on professional advancement. We can choose ourselves as
the only object of our lives. What kind of person we become
depends on what or who the lord of our hearts is. We become like
the one we love. "By their fruits you will know them". Each one of
us is a living proof that "We become like the one we love". We can
also leave our heart empty, faithless, hopeless, loveless. But the
unbearable pain of loneliness will eventually wake us up to the
need of being loved and the desire to love. We want to love, we
need to be loved. But whom should we love and who loves us really?
We offer our trust and love to the one we want. Our heart is
always a gift, the greatest gift we can ever offer - the gift of
self. Nobody can take hold of our hearts unless we let them do so.
Our Creator has given each one of us the only key to our hearts.
We have the power to open our heart to the one we want. Not even
God ever forces His way into our hearts. Yet we often find our
hearts controlled by somebody we don't remember inviting. We have
all been, at least sometimes, seduced, fooled, deceived. We leave
the door unlocked. Somebody walks in, becomes our master, robs us
and leaves! We should learn from our mistakes.
Only God, who knows
and loves us better than we do, deserves to be the lord of our
hearts. We are fortunate when we discover like Saint Augustine,
that "we have been created to love God and only loving Him can our
hearts find rest and peace".
God wishes to
communicate with each of us in love. Even when I am a prisoner of
my own sinful tendencies and cannot control them, God knows me and
wishes to be with me and to help me along the way of liberation
and transformation. Any time, even in the darkest situation, I
should ask: "In whom do I put my trust and hope?", "Do I believe
and trust God?", "Do I let God be my creator and redeemer?" If we
let Him in, He will heal us, He will mend our broken hearts, give
us a new heart and not let us be hurt again.
Previous
Next
|
|
