we may want to celebrate a person’s position, role, possessions, and popularity, these things are never the most important. Lacking in love, all that we are and do becomes hollow, and at the end of the day results in a descent into fruitlessness. Love, on the other hand, can move people to great well-being and to do the noblest acts and the greatest deeds.
Thought
Love fructifies. It brings life to desert places and hope to despair.
Isaiah 44:22
January 18
The Return
Much of our contemporary language in church and society is about moving forward. But the secret of life is also about
moving backward to the places of failure and need. The very places we seek to run away from may well be the places to which we need to return.
That humans want to move forward is a part of their existential longing for fullness and completion. This is an important dimension of human existence: reaching towards the future.
But there is more to the human story. We are also people in flight and as such we are moving away from where we ought to be and where we need to remain. This is so often true in our relationships, commitments, and priorities. It is also true in our relationship to God.
St. Anselm exhorts us: “Hope in him whom you fear, flee to him from whom you have fled.”18
Thus there is the call to return. And what a difficult call it is. We would rather forget and move on. To return often means to face the
difficult and neglected places.
Much grace is needed to return to the places of neglect, hurt, and disobedience. The return invites us to linger at these places in order to face them and to work things through in the journey of forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing.
The greatest return is not only to the places of pain, but also to the places of our willfulness, our disobedience, and our flight from the loving heart of God.
Thought
To return in order to receive much-needed reconciliation and healing makes us candidates for truly moving forward.
Acts 2:44–46
January 19
Christian Community
Throughout much of the history of the Christian church, Christians have sought to live their faith with a great level of intentionality. As such, they have created communities alongside of and in relation to the parish church.
The Didache, a first or second century early church teaching manual, states: “Do not turn your back on the needy, but share everything with your brother and call nothing your own. For if you have what is eternal in common, how much more should you have [in common] what is transient.”19
This articulation of a life of common sharing goes back to the
common purse community of Jesus and his disciples, the example of the Jerusalem church, and the emphasis in the Pauline house churches of the call to care for one another in practical ways.
This vision of a common life in Christ has been lived out throughout the ages and poses a particular challenge to the contemporary Western church with its consumer Christianity where little commitment is made to have and share a life together.
The church and intentional communities are to reflect the life of the Trinity and as such call Christians, not only into participating in
worship, teaching, and sacraments, but also in sharing time, resources, and possessions.
A shared common life in Christ is key to both our personal formation in the way of Christ and in our witness to the world. And such a life may well help us minimize our exploitation of the earth’s fragile resources.
Reflection
Community in and through Christ, which practices hospitality, can
become a window for others into the heart of the gospel.
Psalm 65:9–13
January 20
God the Sustainer
While we have made a dichotomy between the natural world, as the world of science, and the spiritual world of faith, our Christian forebears made no such distinctions. God is above, but also in all things.
Sadly, we moderns have become terribly reductionistic. Things of God and of faith have largely been relegated to the private sphere of life and to the sanctuary. All else has been relegated to the secular sphere of life.
Neither the biblical story nor our Christian foremothers and forefathers support such a view. In fact, the opposite is the case. God as the creator and sustainer of the universe and of our world is involved in all things. No sphere of life is outside of God’s love and concern.
St. Patrick, reflecting an Irish spirituality of God in the midst of all the daily activities of life, writes: “He inspires all things, he quickens all things, he is over all things, he supports all things.”20
This is a wonderful vision of life. God’s Spirit at work in nature. God’s Spirit renewing our inner life. God’s Spirit sustaining and empowering the church. The Spirit at work in families and social institutions. God’s presence everywhere working unseen and mysteriously to sustain, renew, and bring goodness and love.
We will need new eyes of faith to see such things. But the biblical story and the inspiration of the Spirit can give us such a new vision. And such a vision can provide a new impetus to the contemporary church in its witness to the world.
Thought
If God is not nowhere, then God is everywhere.
Matthew 6:9–10
January 21
Kingdom and Spirituality
When the church and the kingdom of God have been confused with each other then the church has received too much power and the church has been tempted to bring in the kingdom by human means. But the kingdom or reign of God is always first and foremost the presence and action of God in the world.
Florentius Radewijns, one of the key leaders of the Brethren of the
Common Life, stated: “Our aim and final destination is the Kingdom of God. The road which leads to that goal is purity of heart.”21
In this statement, the connection is made between personal and communal spirituality and the in-breaking kingdom of God. While our spirituality is not the ground of the kingdom, it is the fruit of the reign of God. And such fruit brings goodness wherever it is manifested.
An inner life devoted to prayer and the presence of God is a life marked by the kingdom and as such is a life that opens the door for being a servant of the kingdom that expresses the way of Christ rather than the way of the world.
Purity of
