Nov 2014 The Road to Daybreak A Spiritual Journey by Henri J M Nouwen

Knowing and Loving Continue from Her response is "Rabboni," "Master." I hear her response as her desire to have Jesus truly be her master, the master of her whole being: her thoughts and feelings, her passion and hope, even her most hidden emotions. I hear her say, "You who know me so fully, come and be my master. I do not want to keep you away from any part of myself. I want you to touch the deepest places of my heart so that I won't belong to anyone but you." I can see what a healing moment this encounter must have been. Mary feels at once fully known and fully loved. The division between what she feels safe to show and what she does not dare to reveal no longer exists. She is fully seen and she knows that the eyes that see her are the eyes of forgiveness, mercy, love, and unconditional acceptance. I sense that here, in this simple encounter, we can see a true religious moment. All fear is gone, and all has become love. And how better can this be expressed than by Jesus' words, "go and find my brothers, and tell them: I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God" (John 20:17). There is no longer any difference between Jesus and those whom he loves. They are part of the intimacy that Jesus enjoys with his Father. They belong to the same family. They share the same life in God. What a joy to be fully known and fully loved at the same time! It is the joy of belonging through Jesus to God and being there, fully safe and fully free. Feeling Caught A lot of very dark feelings today. Hard to dispel. Most powerful are the feelings of being caught. The powers of darkness have such a grip on me that "coming into the light" seems hardly possible. People leave without saying good-bye, people write saying that I am selfish, people grow angry because I have not written them. People have farewell parties without inviting me, people tell me that the things they promised cannot be done, and so on. Suddenly I feel lost, disconnected, forgotten, left alone, misused, manipulated, confused, angry, resentful, spiteful, and full of self-pity. So little is needed to slip into a depression! I am amazed by the fragility of my emotional balance. The only thing I can do is look at my emotional state with a certain distance and realize how easily everything turns dark. Happily, the Gospel today has much to tell me - it is the conversation of Jesus with Nicodemus. If there is any conversation I should take seriously, it is this one. So much of me is like Nicodemus, wanting to see the light, but coming to Jesus during the night. Jesus says to Nicodemus, "though the light has come into the world, people have preferred darkness to the light" (John 3:19). In me I can feel this strange preference for the darkness. It seems as if I resist coming into the light and enjoy staying in my self-made darkness. Jesus offers the light, the truth, the life coming from above. He makes it clear that God wants to pull me away from the darkness; he wants to offer me a solid love to dwell in, a firm ground to stand on, a faithful presence to trust in. But I have to look upward instead of inward, and embrace the gifts that are given. Yet why all this resistance? Why this powerful attraction to the darkness? Jesus says, "Everybody who does wrong hates the light and avoids it, to prevent his actions from being shown up; but whoever does the truth comes out into the light, so that what he is doing may plainly appear as done in God" (John 3:20-21). That is an answer to my question. I do often prefer my darkness to God's light. I prefer to hang on to my sinful ways because they give me some satisfaction, some sense of self, some feeling of importance. I know quite well that moving into God's light requires me to let go of all these limited pleasures and no longer to see my life as made by me, but as given by God. Living in the light means acknowledgeing joyfully the truth that all that is good, beautiful, and worthy of praise belongs to God. It is only a truly God-centered life that will pull me out of my depressions and give me hope. It is a clear path, but a very hard path as well.

- To Be Continued - © Copyright Shalom 2014. All rights reserved.