Reflection…
by Ruth Salles
At Christmas, I was born. I was born into the awareness, greater each year, that I am a spiritual being.
But and now? Now I am planted in the world as a very entangled, very complicated person, and how am I going to make my discovery of this new birth count?
A contemplative monk said that when God created us, it was as if he pronounced a specific sound for each one. And that sound, if we pronounced it, that is, if we were, we would accomplish what God intended of us. But, alas, how much out of tune with that primordial sound, what an intricate skein of sounds I formed! Deep down, though, I sometimes hear the true sound. Ah… And I try to chant it. I always try.
How many times I asserted my personality, expanding it in wrong directions, as in a true inner carnival (Carnevale! Save the meat!). It is, indeed, it is as if in those three days we passed through the three dense spheres that we have within us – the mineral, the vegetable, the animal. So now that every year the awareness that I am something higher grows in me, I go on, as if into the desert, to live my forty days of Lent.
Yes, as Saint Teresa of Avila said, the first stage of prayer is the prayer of self-knowledge. I have to get to know myself and, for that, I empty myself of all external appeals, opinions, knowledge. I make, step by step, my desert. And with each step, I see myself more clearly. Oh, what a fright, my God! Is this difficult being I have to face? Is it this kind of Medusa's head that I, Perseus, have to conquer? Yes, because Medusa's face is always represented – as it was by Benvenuto Cellini – just like the face of the hero. Oh, there she is, with her snake hair, as if all her acquired knowledge was struggling in confusion. Steady, Perseus! Don't look Medusa in the face, otherwise you'll be petrified! For, fixing my gaze and concern on my “old man” and entangled in him, I will forget the next step to be taken. But not! I look at Medusa through her reflection in the bright protective shield of faith, of the spiritual vision of life! And I manage, in this way, to cut off his head, which no longer dominates me.
And the desert gets wider and wider. I am thirsty and I am hungry, and temptations pursue me:
– Tell these stones to turn into bread!
No! I know well that the stone of me does not change so easily in such an important food. Not. It is an illusion to want to change so quickly. Better than thinking about being wonderful bread is hearing every word that comes out of God's mouth, hearing the sound, that sound of me that was given to me to sing alone. In this I will sign.
– Throw yourself down from here, and the angels will support you!
No! So violent ending up is foolish, it's abusing Divine Providence. My “old man” will have to go on dying because I no longer need him, for lack of use, for natural and gradual abandonment.
- I will give you everything if you adore me!
No, no! I don't love this skein of out-of-tune sounds and its petty richness. I only adore the supreme harmony of God in his realization, which also contains mine.
Go away, temptation, the angels are already feeding me, already preparing my Passover, my passage through the Red Sea, from slavery to freedom, from death to life!
Lent of 1990
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