Reflection
May 20, 2008, 22:59
Reading Thomas Merton's "No Man is an Island" at the moment. A collection of his reflections on various topics such as what seeking His will means. Merton's writings have proven to be a balm in these past few days as I grapple to discern how I can better develop a closer and more prayerful relationship with the Divine, to offer my life to Him as a sacrifice and to be able to open my heart to love whole-heartedly, passionately and unselfishly. Over the past week, I have also embarked on a journey to discover myself, to cast off my mask and be the real me.
I cant wait to go to HK to meet P. I have booked my ticket and the only thing I need now is for my leave to be approved and to do up my itinerary.
I hope the following passages will inspire you as they did me:
No matter how ruined man and his world may seem to be, and no matter how terrible man’s despair may become, as long as he continues to a be a man his very humanity continues to tell him that life has a meaning…our purpose in life is to discover this meaning, and live according to it. We have, therefore, something to live for. The process of living, of growing up, and becoming a person, is precisely the gradually increasing awareness of what that something is. First of all, although men have a common destiny, each individual also has to work out his own personal salvation in fear and trembling. We can help one another to find out the meaning of life, no doubt. But in the last analysis the individual person is responsible for living his faith and for “finding himself.” You cannot tell me who I am, and I cannot tell you who you are. Others can give you a name or a number, but they can never tell you who you really are. That is something you yourself can only discover from within.”
Man is divided against himself and against God by his own selfishness, which divides him against his brother. This division cannot be healed by a love that places itself only on one side of the rift. Love must reach over to both sides and draw them together. we cannot love ourselves unless we love others, and we cannot love others unless we love ourselves but a selfish love of others makes us incapable of loving others. The difficulty of this commandment lies in the paradox that it would have us love ourselves unselfishly, because even our love of ourselves is something we owe to others."
There is no end to the sharing of love, and, therefore, the potential happiness of such love is without limit. infinite sharing is the law of God's inner life. he has made the sharing of ourselves the law of our own being, so that it is in loving others that we best love ourselves.
A selfish love seldom respects the rights of the beloved to be an autonomous person. far from respecting the true being of another and granting his personality room to grow and expand in its original way, this love seeks to keep him in subjection to ourselves. It insists that he conform himself to us, and it works in every possible way to make him do so ... In loving them we seek to make pets of them, to keep them tame. Such love fears nothing more than the escape of the beloved...selfish love often appears to be unselfish, because it is willing to make any concessions to the beloved one in order to keep him prisoner. but it is supreme selfishness to buy what is best in a person, his liberty, his integrity, his autonomous dignity as a person, at the price of far lesser goods.
May God preserve me from the love of a friend who will never dare to rebuke me. may he preserve me from a friend who seeks to do nothing but change and correct me. May he preserve me still more from one whose love is only satisfied by being rebuked.
"When all this has been said, the truth remains that our destiny is to love one another as Christ has loved us. Jesus had very few close friends when he was on earth, and yet he loved and loves all men and is, to every soul born into this world, that soul's most intimate friend. The lives of all the men we met and know are woven into our own destiny, together with the lives of many we shall never know on earth. but certain ones, very few, are our close friends. because we have more in common with them, we are able to love them with a special selfless perfection, since we have more to share. they are inseparable from our own destiny, and, therefore, our love for them is especially holy: it is a manifestation of God in our lives"
"Each one of us has some kind of vocation. We are all called by God to share in his life and in his kingdom. Each one of us is called to a special place in his kingdom. if we find that place we will be happy. If we do not find it, we can never be completely happy. For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God's will, to be what God wants us to be ."
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