AS renovations and repairs have begun to wind up at our farm since the storm six months ago, I find myself in a place of utter brokenness. Eighteen years of full time ministry, at times living on the verge of bankruptcy, isolation and trying to answer God’s call to be a “watchman” whilst raising eight children, pretending to be a farmer, and keeping a straight face… have taken their toll. Years of wounds lie open, and I find myself breathless in my brokenness.
And so, I am setting off into the night, that place of the darkness of faith where one must be stripped and laid bare upon the Cross… my cross… with all my dysfunction, sin, and poverty fully exposed. It is the place where all consolations vanish like phantoms and there is only the howling of the desert wolf who stalks with lies, temptations and despair. But beyond the darkness is a new dawn. I cannot see it. I cannot feel it. I cannot know it… not with my mind, except to know that Jesus Christ has already forged the path. And so, I must now enter the tomb with Him; I must descend with Him into the Hades of my making so that I, me, the true me made in God’s image, may rise. It is toward this that I am setting out this night, with a broken and torn heart, leaving everything behind. Because I have nothing more to give.
We must know and, more to the point, feel in our bones, what is wrong with us; we must look it in the face and acknowledge it with uncompromising honesty. Without this “searching moral inventory,” without this journey into our own inner Hell, we will not feel the compunction to shift our way of being and seeing. And, at the same time, we must awaken what is god-like in us, what is rich and fecund and unbroken, what is in continuity with the saving designs of God. —Bishop Robert Barron, And Now I See; citation: catholicexchange.com
I love you all. Always. Thank you for giving me a break over Christmas.
You are loved.
