Because my childhood was a long, long time ago, Mass was said in Latin and truth be told, the sermons may as well have been for all the interest they held, so, to my mind, there was a lot of empty space to be filled while in church. I filled that space with stories. First I discovered that the gospels and epistles were bible stories and so I'd read those but my favorite goldmine of stories was in the back of my missal. There, in the back pages were stories of saints, which it turns out, were not stories of goody-two-shoes but stories of passionate adventurous people
I was thinking about this because today is All Saints Day, a day of celebrating people who lived the adventure of being passionately in love with God: ardent persons.
Ardor is an old fashion word and in some ways, it is an old fashion way of being for there is nothing sophisticated about the burning enthusiasm of ardor. Children naturally have ardor; what they love is loved without reservation be it bugs, dinosaurs, rocks, their best friend or pet. A child bestows love without reservation because a child has no image of self to uphold and therefore a child's love is unsophisticated; it is genuine and fierce. Witness a young child spying their mom or dad after separation and you see ardor in action as the child runs and flings themselves; their entire being captured by enthusiastic love.
Enthusiasm is one of my favorite words of living for taken apart, the prefix en means within and theos is God: enthusiasm is to be within God; to know the experience of being held within love, exactly as a child knows love when held in the arms of mom or dad, grandma or grandpa, beloved aunt or uncle.
Maybe the saints, those ardent persons who lived knowing they were animated by God's love are at heart, simply persons who took seriously one of the best known stories of the bible. You know it, it's the one where Jesus has been preaching all day and is looking a bit tired and still, at the end of the afternoon, parents are pressing to get to the front of the crowd so he may bless their children . Meanwhile, the apostles are trying to be helpful and give Jesus some space and so they're telling the parents, 'no he's tired, let him be.' And then Jesus hears this and immediately puts a stop to it, "do not keep the children from me' he says, for unless you become as one of them, you shall not enter my kingdom."
Unless we become like a child: unsophisticated, eager to discover and learn, fervent, genuine, sincere, fiercely devoted and full of ardor: burning enthusiasm, we cannot enter the kingdom. Why? Because the kingdom is love and the story of the saints always has one common element: they entered the kingdom of love by passionately living the life they found within God's love. They became God's child.
Ardor is an old fashion word and in some ways, it is an old fashion way of being for there is nothing sophisticated about the burning enthusiasm of ardor. Children naturally have ardor; what they love is loved without reservation be it bugs, dinosaurs, rocks, their best friend or pet. A child bestows love without reservation because a child has no image of self to uphold and therefore a child's love is unsophisticated; it is genuine and fierce. Witness a young child spying their mom or dad after separation and you see ardor in action as the child runs and flings themselves; their entire being captured by enthusiastic love.
Enthusiasm is one of my favorite words of living for taken apart, the prefix en means within and theos is God: enthusiasm is to be within God; to know the experience of being held within love, exactly as a child knows love when held in the arms of mom or dad, grandma or grandpa, beloved aunt or uncle.
Maybe the saints, those ardent persons who lived knowing they were animated by God's love are at heart, simply persons who took seriously one of the best known stories of the bible. You know it, it's the one where Jesus has been preaching all day and is looking a bit tired and still, at the end of the afternoon, parents are pressing to get to the front of the crowd so he may bless their children . Meanwhile, the apostles are trying to be helpful and give Jesus some space and so they're telling the parents, 'no he's tired, let him be.' And then Jesus hears this and immediately puts a stop to it, "do not keep the children from me' he says, for unless you become as one of them, you shall not enter my kingdom."
Unless we become like a child: unsophisticated, eager to discover and learn, fervent, genuine, sincere, fiercely devoted and full of ardor: burning enthusiasm, we cannot enter the kingdom. Why? Because the kingdom is love and the story of the saints always has one common element: they entered the kingdom of love by passionately living the life they found within God's love. They became God's child.
Bravo!
ReplyDeleteWell said.
ReplyDeletethank you !!! REALLY appreciate the encouragement ...
Delete