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Like most people, I would prefer to escape deep loss and to avoid hard and challenging times. Yet the dark has given me gifts that are immeasurably deep. It was because I wrestled with the dark that I learned to see beyond what was happening on the surface of my life, and grew to understand that everything is more than it appears to be. In time I knew that the dark is not absent of light. Light moves within the dark at a great depth. With this realization came a glimpse of the inordinate beauty and power just beyond our sight.

An important step in the spiritual life is simply to answer God’s question. God, who created you in love, who knows everything about you, is asking you, Where are you? This is not a question asked by an angry God. An angry God wouldn’t care. It is important that we see this question for what it is. By asking such a question, God is out to expose you. Not so that he can show you everything that is wrong with you, or even everything that is right, but simply because God wants to be with you where you are, and whether we know it or not: God’s already there. 

The more we focus on what God’s plan for us might be, the less we need to concern ourselves with other people’s reactions. Our self-worth is not dependent on other people’s opinions of us. No one else has the power to make us better or worse than we are. Only our choices can do that. We are here because the God who gave us free will also loved us into existence. It is not easy to remember this without some outside validation to help us. That might be why God created us to live in community.

The goal of a spirituality of desire is nothing more— and nothing less—than to be with God. There are many paths to get there, but our challenge is to find the unique path that God has laid out for each one of us. With varying levels of awareness, we are all walking this path. But to discover what it is we are looking for it is not enough to set our sights on being with God in some ideal heavenly future. The spiritual life requires an appreciation of how God is with us where we are now and where God was—or wasn’t—with us in our past.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. This short prayer of praise known as the Glory Be comes at the end of each decade, but it is not simply a closing prayer. Rather it is meant to express the peak of our contemplation. Praise of the Holy Trinity is the Christian response to the events of salvation that God has accomplished in his Son.

Pierre Toussaint’s life really is a remarkable one that leaves you saying, “That’s incredible.” It is hard to believe that a man would remain enslaved just because his widowed owner needed him. It is also a stretch to understand how one man could endure racial indignities, even in his church, yet continue to nurture his Catholic spirit of philanthropy and good will. How does such a person manage to remain positive amid every obstacle and emerge as a pillar of courage and strength both for his oppressors and supporters?