Search Results for: Lent – Page 153

Now I am under the sky. The birds are silent now. But the frogs have begun singing their pleasure in all the waters and in the warm, green places where the sunshine is wonderful. Praise Christ, all you living creatures. For Him you and I were created. With every breath we love Him. My psalms fulfill your dim, unconscious song, O brothers in this wood…

According to the Christian tradition, angels and humans are capable of knowing and loving God. Angels do this more excellently than humans, but both do it. In the Christian tradition, angels are present not only at miraculous times, they are all around us impacting many aspects of our lives. Saint Bonaventure, a Franciscan friar from the Middle Ages, took it for granted that angels are “circling around us like flies.” Angels, to be certain, give us this lasting comfort: We are never alone.

It is tempting to think of peacefulness as merely the refusal to be violent—especially when we live in a culture that emphasizes the duty to leave others alone. But if it is truly Christian peacefulness, it must involve loving action or charity. Christian charity requires that we imitate Jesus’ active loving-kindness for all. This fulfills Jesus’ central command to love our neighbor as ourselves. Especially if that neighbor is in need, Christianity requires that we come to his or her aid and actively seek justice.

Jesus calls us to follow him on his own path of humiliation. When at certain moments in life we fail to find any way out of our difficulties, when we sink in the thickest darkness, it is the moment of our total humiliation, the hour in which we experience that we are frail and are sinners. It is precisely then, at that moment, that we must not deny our failure but rather open ourselves trustingly to hope in God, as Jesus did.