Chapter 28 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Good Monday Morning to this week 28 of 2022
The fourth-century Christian hermits of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine understood the truth of Christian community profoundly, and their lives demonstrate it vividly\u2014even though they often lived in solitude and isolation.
There is much to learn from the Desert Fathers as true and worthy role models, even for us in our modern lives as dealing with the anxieties, uncertainties, and sense of isolation that have become hallmarks of modern life.
A few translated quotes by Rowan Williams <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Truth makes love possible; love makes truth bearable.
This life of utter givenness to God and the other, the neighbour, is already a life that evil cannot contain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[Knowing God]\u2026 call it love, yes, only that can sound too emotional, or call it faith, and that can sound too cerebral. And what is it? Both, and neither\u2026 [its] the decision to be faithful, the patient refusal of easy gratifications\u2026 of Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane and on the cross, that bloody crown of love and faith. That is how I learn finally of a God who will not be fitted into my categories and expectations\u2026 the living truth too great for me to see, trusting that He will see and judge and yet not turn me away\u2026 That is the mercy which will never give us, or even let us be content with less than itself and less than the truth\u2026 we have seen the truth enacted in our own world as mercy, grace and hope, as Jesus, the only-begotten, full of grace and truth..
If you can accept that God is more than an idea which keeps your philosophy tidy \u2013 then you may find a way back to an engagement with them that is more creative because you are more aware of the oddity, the uncontrollable quality of the truth at the heart of all things. This is what \u2018detachment\u2019 means \u2013 not being \u2018above the battle\u2019, but being involved in such a way that you can honestly confront whatever comes to you without fear of the unknown; it is a kind of readiness for the unexpected, if that is not too much of a paradox.
I have, by God\u2019s grace, learned as a member of the Christian community what is the nature of God\u2019s mercy, which does not leave me to overcome my sin by my own effort, so I have something to say to the fellow-sufferer who does not know where to look for hope. And what I have to say depends utterly on my willingness not to let go of that awareness of myself that reminds me where I start each day\u2014not as a finished saint but as a needy person still struggling to grow.
Our new humanity that is created around Jesus is not a humanity that is always going to be successful and in control of things, but a humanity that can reach out its hand from the depths of chaos, to be touched by the hand of God.
Wishing you a good start to this week.
Philemon
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Chapter 28 Good Monday Morning to this week 28 of 2022 The fourth-century Christian hermits of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine understood the truth of Christian community profoundly, and their lives demonstrate it vividly\u2014even though they often lived in solitude and isolation. There is much to learn from the Desert Fathers as true and worthy role … <\/p>\n