On emptying

"Christ Jesus ... though He was in the form of God, did not deem equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, He emptied Himself..."--Philippians 2:5-7 (NAB)

Merry Christmas! This passage, which is used in Evening Prayer I for Christmas, so perfectly expresses the reality at the heart of this mystery.

John Paul the Great, borrowing and elaborating on a term in Gaudium et Spes para. 24, wrote, "Love causes man to find fulfillment through the sincere gift of self. To love means to give and to receive something which can be neither bought nor sold, but only given freely and mutually." (Familiaris Consortio [Letter to Families], para. 11).

God, who is love (I John 4:8), demonstrates this principle for us in the Three Divine Persons continually and eternally giving themselves wholly and completely to each other. The Second Person, in turn, out of the Triune God's love for all humanity, made a "sincere gift of self" to us, emptying Himself for our sake of His glory and becoming a man, a baby, Jesus. What an utterly mind-boggling reality! That the Creator of the Universe should love us so much as to make a sincere gift of His Divine Self to us.

But John Paul wrote that "To love means to give and to receive..." Are we going to receive the incredible gift and make a sincere gift of ourselves back to Him in return? Are we going to respond to such love with love? The answer that each one of us makes to that question is the difference between Christmas being just a "winter holiday" and Christmas being a celebration of an indescribable exchange of love between you and God.

These days this passage on emptying has another meaning for me as I'm continuing the slow process of weeding and purging mentioned in my previous post. Even though I'm weeding in a physical way, I sense that God wants this to also involve an internal emptying, a clearing out of space inside my soul, so that there might be more room to receive Him. I don't want my heart and soul to be like the inn that had no room for His coming as a baby. I want it to be open wide to receive His gift of love.

Fr. Thomas Dubay cites a quote from Blessed Angela of Foligno in his book Deep Conversion/Deep Prayer that expresses this principle of giving and receiving so well. It's actually a statement that the Lord made to Angela: "Make yourself a capacity and I will make myself a torrent." (p. 74)

I don't know how to accomplish this internal emptying, this making of myself a capacity, other than to say to the Lord, "Yes, I want what You want. Please help me to cooperate with Your action in my heart, my soul, my life."

Dear Blessed Mother, you who were so completely given over to the Lord that you were able to receive Him in a way far more profound than any human being ever has, please pray for me, that I, too, may empty myself completely into Him and receive Him in whatever way He chooses to give Himself to me.

The Need to Weed (a.k.a. The Urge to Purge :-) )

"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."--Mt. 6:19-21

For a few years now, I’ve been sensing a gentle whisper from God that I need to weed excess “stuff” from my life. I think it’s fair to say that I’m not terribly materialistic: I don’t own a flashy new car, lots of clothes, or a big-screen TV. (I don’t own a TV at all!) But I do tend to hold onto two categories of stuff: things with sentimental value and things that might in any way, now or in the future, be useful. I’ve realized recently that, as far as the second category is concerned, I have a real Depression-era mentality-­-I don’t hold onto used string, but just about anything else is a candidate for "hoarding"!

Although I’ve been willing to weed, it takes time to weed, and time is one of the things that’s always been in short supply in my life, so I’ve never really acted on the whisper. This fall, though, the Lord seems to be turning up the volume through a variety of circumstances:

• The remnants of Hurricane Ike soaked southeastern Michigan in early September, resulting in water seeping into my apartment for the first time in the 15 years I’ve lived here. Fortunately, nothing was damaged, but moving lots of stuff from my bedroom so that the carpet could dry out made me aware in a new way of just how much stuff I really had. As I moved things back in, I started weeding. I’m not sure, though, if that experience alone would have sufficed to really get my attention.
  
  
• In mid-October, a friend in my apartment complex unexpectedly moved to California on short notice. When faced with the cost of shipping cross country, she chose instead to purge. The night that I helped her, I could see that she was really being brutal, appropriately so, in throwing things out or giving them away. It made an impact, and I was starting to connect the dots for my own life.
  
  
• The day before my neighbor left town, a close friend of mine, Jean, died unexpectedly during a heart catheterization procedure following a heart attack. As you might expect, losing a dear friend who was relatively close to my own age brought to life in a renewed way Jesus’ words, “You do not know the day or the hour.” In addition, another of Jean’s friends and I spent some time helping her sister sort through her library. Jean was not a "keeper" in the same way that I am, plus she was very organized. Nonetheless, there was still a lot of stuff for her siblings to deal with as they closed out her apartment. All three of us were left thinking, "If this is what someone like Jean left behind, then I really need to purge!"
  
  
• Finally, just in case I hadn’t gotten the message­--I can be pretty dense, so I always ask God to be blatant with me­--on St. Nicholas Day, December 6, Mom and I attended a party to which each guest was asked to bring a wrapped gift of less than five dollars. They were then all mixed up and redistributed to the 40 or so guests attending. When I opened mine, I found a small book entitled 101 Ways to Clean Out the Clutter. Does God have a sense of humor or what??? :-D
  

I don’t know why the Lord is choosing to emphasize this message right now. But as Fr. Benedict Groeschel has said, “Do not ask God, ‘Why?’ Ask rather, ‘What would You have me do?’ ” There’s no way at this point that I could possibly say that I don’t know what God wants me to do. I’m still not sure, though, how the time issue is going to work out, especially right now as I ramp up for the busiest month of my work year, so if you think of it, please say a prayer that I will be able to make the time, in the midst of everything else, to get done the weeding that He clearly wants me to do.

In 2009, may our gracious and merciful God also make clear to you what He wants you to do, and give you every grace you need to accomplish it. God bless you!

Theresa