"A New Season"

"Relationship" (Relational Love: part 4)

          Faith is both a gaze of love and a covenant that is lived in the  relational intensity of love. Real faith involves the heart. The scripture says, "one believes with the heart" (Rom. 10:10). The heart is where Jesus dwells within us (see Eph. 3:17). "Contemplative prayer is a covenant relationship established by God within our hearts" (Catechism of the Catholic Church  2713). In the midst of this relationship I discover that I am a dwelling place of the Lord--where he lives, moves and has his being: "Silence, all mankind, in the presence of the LORD! For he stirs forth from his holy dwelling" (Zech. 2:17). In this encounter of silent love, the Holy spirit "enables [me] to share in the prayer of Jesus" (CCC 2717) to the Father--now from within my own humanity. For, I am a "temple of the living God" (2 Cr. 6:16).

          Jesus wants to continue to live his life within me--and hence his love of, and his relationship with, the Father.  Jesus has set his "wine cellar" in the center of my soul. There he visits me in love and engages me in sacred, mystical experience, "with the train of his garment filling the temple" (Is. 6:1). There I find my "food and drink in steady supply" (Is. 33:16), feasting on his mystical manna and led to spiritual "springs of life-giving water" (Rev. 7:17): "The living water which says deep inside me, "Come to the Father" ("From a letter to the Romans" by St. Ignatius of Antioch, bishop and martyr, LH, vol. IV, p. 1491).

          In the "wine cellar" of my soul "my spirit within me keeps vigil for" "him whom my heart loves" until "suddenly there will come to the temple the LORD whom [I] seek" (Is. 26:9; Songs 3:2; Mal. 3:1). There I gaze "with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord" (2 Cr. 3:18), "and dine with him, and he with me" (Rev. 3:20).  Jesus tells us, "whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him" (John 14:21). He makes himself known to me. 

          As he lives his life within me, Jesus continues to live "his relationship with the Father--a relationship of loving and adoring, self-giving, a pouring out of life towards the other" (Archbishop Rowan Williams, primate of England, "address to the synod of bishops", Oct. 11, 2012, # 5). Jesus promises us, "whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him" (John 14:23).

Questions:

1)   What are a few of the ways in which Jesus has revealed himself to me most recently?

2)   What kind of "spring cleaning" does the "dwelling place" of my life need to undergo in order to become a more suitable tabernacle of God's presence?

Scriptures:

Any scripture from the text; Psalm 139:1,13; Mt. 11:27; John 6:44