Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
From the Center for Action and Contemplation
Week Twenty-two: "Vocation"
"Solidarity with the World"Friday, June 1, 2018
Following Jesus is not a “salvation scheme” or a means of creating social order as much as it is a vocation to share the fate of God for the life of the world. Some people are overly invested in religious ceremonies, rituals, and rules about naming who’s in and who’s out. They love to protect boundaries. Jesus did not come to create a spiritual elite or an exclusionary system. He invited people to “follow” him by personally bearing the mystery of human death and divine resurrection.
Those who agree to carry and love what God loves, both the good and the bad of history, and to pay the price for its reconciliation within themselves—these are the followers of Jesus (Philippians 3:10-12). They are the leaven, the salt, the remnant, the mustard seed that God can use to transform the world. The cross is the dramatic image of what it takes to be such a usable one for God.
A saint is one who somehow voluntarily chooses to trust the daily paradox of life and death as the two sides of everything. We, too, can walk this path of welcoming disappointment and self-doubt, by “suffering” the full truth of reality. Our vocation is a willingness to hold—and transform—the dark side of things instead of reacting against them, denying them, or projecting our anxiety elsewhere. Without such a willingness to hold the very real tension of paradox, most lives end in negativity, blaming, or cynicism. Holding does not necessarily mean fully reconciling. It is indeed a “suffering” of reality which implies some degree of patience, humility, and forgiveness.
We do not have to do this to make God love us. That is already taken care of. We do it to love God back and to love what God loves and howGod loves!
Gateway to Presence: If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation.
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Adapted from Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 1999, 2003), 179-180; andEager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi(Franciscan Media: 2014), 22-23.
Image credit: Automat (detail), 1927, Edward Hopper, Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa.
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My hope, whenever I speak or write, is to help clear away the impediments to receiving, allowing, trusting, and participating in a foundational Love. God’s love is planted inside each of us as the Holy Spirit who, according to Jesus, “will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you” (John 14:26). Love is who you are. (Richard Rohr)
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"Image and Likeness"
2018 Daily Meditations Theme
God said, “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness.” (Genesis 1:26)
Richard Rohr explores places in which God’s presence has often been ignored or assumed absent. God’s “image” is our inherent identity in and union with God, an eternal essence that cannot be destroyed. “Likeness” is our personal embodiment of that inner divine image that we have the freedom to develop—or not—throughout our lives. Though we differ in likeness, the imago Dei persists and shines through all created things.
Over the course of this year’s Daily Meditations, discover opportunities to incarnate love in your unique context by unveiling the Image and Likeness of God in all that you see and do.
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Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
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anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
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