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Friday of the Third Week in Lent
You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. Mark 12:30
To live a spiritual life is to live in the presence of God. This very straightforward truth was brought home to me forcefully by Brother Lawrence, a French Carmelite brother who lived in the seventeenth century. The book The Practice of the Presence of God contains four conversations with Brother Lawrence and fifteen letters by him.
He writes: “It is not necessary for being with God to be always at church. We may make an oratory of our heart wherein to retire from time to time to converse with him in meekness, humility, and love. Everyone is capable of such familiar conversation with God, some more, some less .He knows what we can do. Let us begin, then. Perhaps he expects but one generous resolution on our part. Have courage.”
“I know that for the right practice of it [the presence of God] the heart must be empty of all other things, because God will possess the heart alone; and as he cannot possess it alone without emptying it of all besides, so neither can he act there, and do in it what pleases, unless it be left vacant to him.”
Brother Lawrence’s message, in all its simplicity, is very profound. For him who has become close to God, all is one. Only God counts, and in God all people and all things are embraced with love. To live in the presence of God, however, is to live with purity of heart, with simplemindedness, and with total acceptance of his will. That, indeed, demands a choice, a decision, and great courage. It is a sign of true holiness.
Our Prayer
Dear Lord, you once said,
”The will of him who sent me
is that I should lose nothing
of all that he has given to me.”
These words are a source of consolation this day.
They show that you are doing all that can be done
to keep me in your love.
They demonstrate that indeed
you entered this world to save me,
to free me from the bonds of evil and sin,
and to lead me to your Father’s house.
They reveal that you are willing
to struggle against the strong powers
which pull me away from you.
Lord, you want to keep me, hold on to me,
fight for me, protect me, help me, support me,
comfort me, and present me to your Father.
It indeed is your divine task not to lose me!
And yet I am free.
I can separate myself from you,
and you will never take this freedom away from me.
Oh, what a wonder of love,
what a mystery of divine grace!
Please, Lord, let me freely choose for your love
so that I will not be lost to you.
Amen.
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