Christ at the Center
Christ at the Center
Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent – March 28, 2020
The first understanding in Christian spirituality is that God is the center of life, the gravitational pull that holds all things in orbit.
I am not the center.
You are not the center.
My family is not the center.
My country is not the center.
The coronavirus is not the center.
The government is not the center.
The Church is not the center.
Our faith is not the center.
The Bible is not the center.
Only God is the center of life. To orbit around anything or anyone other than God is to place faith in false gods. Idolatry is the Old Testament word for it.
Esther de Waal has some thoughts about Christ at the center of life.
If I am to put Christ at the centre, as St. Benedict would have me to, that then displaces me from the centre. Perhaps I had not noticed how subtle that temptation was, that insidious danger of putting myself at the centre so that the emphasis was on me – me serving God, me trying to be good, in order to please God, me accepting the cross as something imposed by God on his children which I must expect to bear with patience. In other words, me working hard to please God. In prayer perhaps I am actually focusing on myself most of the time, my wants, my needs, my failures. . . .
But when I put Christ, and Christ’s love, at the centre, then that means that I say “Yes” to recognizing that love and letting myself receive that love, standing under that great outpouring of love as I might stand in the midst of a shower of rain or a burst of sunlight. When this “courtesy of love” becomes the most important thing in my life then at last I am beginning to live the way of St. Benedict which is of course simply the Christian life, that life of love which reflects the interplay between the giver and the recipient of love. That is not possible until I know both the source of that love and its object, until I begin to know Christ, and also begin to know my true self, that person made in his image and likeness whom I most deeply and passionately long to be, and whom St. Benedict, in his loving gentleness and strength, in his compassionate and at the same time challenging concern for each of us, will help me to become.
This is the risen Christ of Easter, not some abstract and remote God, but the God who saves us by taking on the human condition, who himself knowing how to be human will lead us on and help us, too, to become more fully human. Throughout the Rule I am being brought face to face with Christ, the risen Christ in all his power and compassion and healing love – the risen Christ who will lead me along the path to the risen self.
[Esther de Waal, Living with Contradiction: An Introduction to Benedictine Spirituality (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1989), 1997.]
For Reflection:
o I think about the image of “the center.” What does the image mean to me? How do I hear it?
o I consider today that prayer is not about me and my needs. It is not even first and foremost about the needs of others. Rather, prayer is first of all about God, who is the Core Reality and the Center of life.
o If prayer is really first of all about God and not about me, how might my prayer change?
Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent – March 28, 2020
The first understanding in Christian spirituality is that God is the center of life, the gravitational pull that holds all things in orbit.
I am not the center.
You are not the center.
My family is not the center.
My country is not the center.
The coronavirus is not the center.
The government is not the center.
The Church is not the center.
Our faith is not the center.
The Bible is not the center.
Only God is the center of life. To orbit around anything or anyone other than God is to place faith in false gods. Idolatry is the Old Testament word for it.
Esther de Waal has some thoughts about Christ at the center of life.
If I am to put Christ at the centre, as St. Benedict would have me to, that then displaces me from the centre. Perhaps I had not noticed how subtle that temptation was, that insidious danger of putting myself at the centre so that the emphasis was on me – me serving God, me trying to be good, in order to please God, me accepting the cross as something imposed by God on his children which I must expect to bear with patience. In other words, me working hard to please God. In prayer perhaps I am actually focusing on myself most of the time, my wants, my needs, my failures. . . .
But when I put Christ, and Christ’s love, at the centre, then that means that I say “Yes” to recognizing that love and letting myself receive that love, standing under that great outpouring of love as I might stand in the midst of a shower of rain or a burst of sunlight. When this “courtesy of love” becomes the most important thing in my life then at last I am beginning to live the way of St. Benedict which is of course simply the Christian life, that life of love which reflects the interplay between the giver and the recipient of love. That is not possible until I know both the source of that love and its object, until I begin to know Christ, and also begin to know my true self, that person made in his image and likeness whom I most deeply and passionately long to be, and whom St. Benedict, in his loving gentleness and strength, in his compassionate and at the same time challenging concern for each of us, will help me to become.
This is the risen Christ of Easter, not some abstract and remote God, but the God who saves us by taking on the human condition, who himself knowing how to be human will lead us on and help us, too, to become more fully human. Throughout the Rule I am being brought face to face with Christ, the risen Christ in all his power and compassion and healing love – the risen Christ who will lead me along the path to the risen self.
[Esther de Waal, Living with Contradiction: An Introduction to Benedictine Spirituality (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1989), 1997.]
For Reflection:
o I think about the image of “the center.” What does the image mean to me? How do I hear it?
o I consider today that prayer is not about me and my needs. It is not even first and foremost about the needs of others. Rather, prayer is first of all about God, who is the Core Reality and the Center of life.
o If prayer is really first of all about God and not about me, how might my prayer change?
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