Friday, July 03, 2009

In a state of nothingness before God we experience true freedom


The offering God loves

What God wants is our trust, our dependence, our reliance, our certainty, our surrender. God loves to be acknowledged by nothingness. In the nothingness that we offer to God, the Everything he gives appears ever more glorious. For the supreme dignity that is ours as human beings is this direct dependence upon God. Our greatness and freedom derive from this dependence.

Therefore, at the presentation of the gifts we offer to God everything in our life that cries out to be filled with his Presence. Everything that is going wrong. All our troubles, our worries, our weakness, our regrets. All our confusion, our frustration, our concerns, our problems, our wounds. All our limitations, our heartaches, our doubts, our afflictions, our inability, our sorrows, our emptiness, our temptations, our broken relationships, our fears, our sufferings, our helplessness - all the trying and impossible circumstances of our life. These we unite to the gifts of bread and wine brought up to the altar so that Christ will take every bit of our longing and our need and turn it into himself. "Let us draw near and give the Divine Pauper a little of our bread and wine, that he may give them back to us invested with his presence, in a communion of life with our" (Father Maurice Zundel).

Finally, let what we offer in the Sunday collection reflect how much our faith, our religion, and our parish truly mean to us.

- Father Peter John Cameron, O.P., from July 2009 Magnificat

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