Friday, May 8, 2020
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Conversion and Hope
God’s love is so immense that we are invited to conversion every moment of our lives – even when we have greatly sinned. This is a message we have heard and seen on Easter Sunday. It is a message the Spirit whispers to us constantly. It is a message we need to examine again . . . for it is a message of hope.
Today we look again at the writings of Dom Augustin Guillerand, a French Carthusian monk who died in 1945. He describes how we allow our will to take over our lives rather than allowing our willingness to teach us humility before God. He writes: “The will is a master that has, in theory, the ordering of everything but, in fact, the full control of nothing . . . When we give God our will fully, little by little he takes the rest, all of our faculties, the whole [person]. The conquest no longer rests with us, but with God; it becomes his affair. As he wishes and when he wishes, he will take our memory, our senses, our passions, our imagination, our intellect, and heart, and he does this by various stages through which we have to pass, and by the trials he sends us”.
In the story of Hosea we see a man who has dedicated his will to God to such an extent that he marries a prostitute because God calls him to this vocation. Through his suffering and because of his pain, Hosea is able to call his people back to God; and Hosea continues to call each of us today. In his beautiful prophecy, Hosea shows us how his love for Gomer never fails . . . and thus he shows us how God’s love never fails.
God’s love, as seen through Hosea, is a love in action. It is a love that sacrifices self will for God’s will. Hosea tells us that love heals disloyalty, it loves freely, it turns away from anger, it is like the dew to new shoots, it gives off a sweet fragrance, it brings life. Hosea tells us that our hope lies in our own desire for and will to enter into conversion. A turning back to God is all that is required. This is a huge request to make of us – yet it is the simplest of tasks if we can only begin by taking one small step each day. And we can begin by refusing to turn back to old, corrupt ways. It is an act of love by the creator to call his created to union. It is an act of love by the created to reply and to go.
The greatest love calls for conversion. The greatest love answers this call. The greatest love brings hope. The greatest love takes up this hope and never lets it go.
I read back over the meditation: “Even if we have nothing to show for it . . .” We cannot give up, even if there is nothing to show for our efforts because the will – our will – is formed by our constant and unwavering willingness to go to God with all trials. This is the nature of a conversion that brings hope.
The greatest Love is God’s and we are called to live out this Love daily. The greatest Love has never and will never be undone. Let us embrace this Love willingly.
Cameron, Peter John. “Meditation of the Day.” MAGNIFICAT. 3.11 (2010). Print.
Image from: http://www.developersolution.com/projects/design_wmm/BNF/Pilates.php
Adapted from a Noontime written on March 11, 2010.
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