Wednesday, November 2, 2011

A Meditation on Hope



FAITH is the life of Christian community.
LOVE is the heart of Christian community.

HOPE is the atmosphere of Christian community.
It is both our breath and our breathing together.

Hope is the eternal spaces between our souls
that distinguish us from love to Love.

It is our faith reversed from the view of the Divine
and our faith received into the welcome hearts of others.

It is a thing that awaits our embrace
existing not in the past nor the future
but always in the present moment.

Hope floats from the deep of God's mystery -
Those timeless little white flowers that grow
upon those wide, open plains and rolling hills,
those evergreen valleys and high mountaintops
of the Eternal Kingdom of our Lord Christ
born from seasons of life's comings and goings
anchored firmly upon the Rock of Ages.

Hope is a promise of something good
and a reality that awaits unredeemed
to be perceived by the eyes of our faith
and received by arms of our souls
into the embrace of the love of Jesus Christ
living by the grace of God in our heart of hearts.

It is the unseen substance of the faith
of individuals and families, tribes and nations,
the vital heritage of entire civilizations -
the numberless promises of lives left behind,
suspended in time between heaven and earth,
living in the ether of a sacred silence
as something for our hearts to embrace...
hopes awaiting the community of other hopes
like the past awaiting the quickening of the present
within the eternal remembrance of God.

My precious friend,
from always to always.
Our faith is ever always our own.
It is something we allow.
It is something we nourish.
Like a sacred union professed,
one love alone with the One Love alone,
ever longing profoundly for Itself.
It is something personal and private
and bears its fruits for the Beloved.

But our hope for it to become
is always the promise of something received,
of a good that we can share with another.
It is something that awaits us
like a herald of the benevolent Prince
that bid us to come into His Eternal Kingdom.
Hope is something to be fulfilled
not by the bearer to whom it is promised
but by the beneficent reality of its Provider
and bears its fruits for the one possessed.
For how can one hope in one's own self
without killing the faith that enable us to see?

Indeed, our hope is in Jesus Christ!
It is our LORD's peace that we share.
It is God's promise for you and me
that matters very, very much!

It is His promise that we must hold on to
through our love and faith in Him
for it is to our God that we must trust.

Hope is what keeps us together.
It is our quite common longing as human beings.
It is always something to be shared
and lends warmth to our being human.
It feeds our hearts with goodwill
and keeps our souls good company.

It is the rarefied space where mercy acts
in the timeless moment of the now
to redeem from despair the truth
that live in other peoples lives.


It fills the sails that advance our common humanity.
It is the unselfish pride and excitement we feel
when we honor something true and worthy of praise
in the excellence within the person of another.

It feeds the fire that keeps us Christian
keeping us ever ready and agile
to serve all souls without distinction.

Glory to the God of heaven and earth,
Adoration to Jesus Christ, our Lord!

Peace and Godspeed to our Holy Father,
Pope Benedict XVI,
and all Bishops in communion
with the successor of Saint Peter.

Peace and Godspeed to our Holy Mother Church!
With much prayers for our Church Suffering -
all our beloved Holy Souls
of family and friends
forever transformed
by their final encounter with God.
All who lived so bravely
and loved us so tenderly,
all whose final hopes on earth
they have now lovingly entrusted to us.

Much prayers and loving support
to all our clergy, our religious and
to each other as Christian laity -
all who live to serve the one God of life
in spirit and in truth.

Peace and Godspeed to all of blessed Christendom
and to all the just who walk this world with us -
may we all work together towards a better world
for all men, women and children of all nations
of the one family of the nations of Mankind.

God be with all of us - now and forever.



So lets pick those little white flowers for Jesus,
and give each day our Savior a lovely bouquet -
joyously extend the Love of God to those in need
these make our Savior's Heart very glad, indeed!
---<--@

Hope Taking Wing