His journal Markings has become one of my favorite places to find fodder for Lectio, or just to sit with and read a few pages right before bedtime. In it you can see a man who was working out his salvation with fear and trembling. (Phil 2:12)
Here are two passages I particularly like that seem almost appropriate to the Conversion of Paul which we celebrated yesterday in the lectionary:
So, once again you chose for yourself-and opened the door to
chaos. The chaos you become whenever God's hand does not rest upon your
head.
He who has once been under God's hand, has lost his innocence: only he feels the full explosive force of destruction which is released by a moment's surrender to temptation.
But when his attention is directed beyond and above, how strong he is , with the strength of God who is within him because he is in God. Strong and free, because his self no longer exists.
How would the moral sense of Reason--and of Society-have evolved
without the martyrs to the faith? Indeed how could this moral sense
have escaped withering away, had it not constantly been watered by the
feeder-stream of power that issues from those who have forgotten themselves in
God? The rope over the abyss is held taut by those who, faithful to a
faith which is the perpetual ultimate sacrifice, give it anchorage in
Heaven.
Those whose souls are married to God have been declared the salt of the earth--woe betide them if the salt should lose its savor.
So true that our freedom lies in God. We must be willing to stay true to faith and reason and stand up for what we know to be right even when Society tells us that we are in the wrong camp. I hope someday to be counted among those who have "forgotten themselves in God". To me that would be a fine epitaph.
Pax
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