Reflection for a New Year

I wish you a blessed first week of 2023! I pray that your Christmas provided moments of peace and recollection with our newborn King. And now as we prepare to return to work or school or other routine activities, let us step back in with one foot, while keeping the other firmly rooted in the inner sanctuary of our hearts – that private place deep within ourselves which we prepared for our Lord’s coming at Christmas. I personally am in no hurry to abandon the slowness and the quietude that the past week has afforded! 

I wanted to share a reflection with you that I have been spending time with in the quiet. It is rich and beautiful. You may want to read it once through and then sit for a moment and see which words seem to speak to your heart.  Offer a simple prayer, such as, “Jesus, show me. Open the eyes and ears of my heart to see You, to hear You more clearly.”
Ask Him:
How are you inviting me to live this thought?
What are You illuminating for me through these words? 

May the Lord continue preparing our hearts for Him until they are His alone.

It is time for you to look ahead
and forget what is behind you,
time to pay attention to what you still need,
and not to what you already have.

And what is ahead,
if you are to make spiritual progress,
is a life lived in desire,
a desire that will always,
through the power of God
and your consent,
be at work in your soul.

You must not forget that
God is a jealous lover.
He has no desire to build in your will a desire for him
unless you are willing to seek only him.
He is not asking for your help,
he is asking for you.
He wants your simple, undistracted gaze.

Leave him do his work in you.
Your only task is to guard
the windows and doors of your soul
against the encroachment of everything
that could distract you from his love.

If you are willing to so this,
all that he asks of you
is to court him humbly in prayer.
He will always, at once, come to your aid.

Call upon him then;
he is most willing
and is only waiting for you.
Why hesitate?

From “Where Only Love Can Go,” reflections on The Cloud of Unknowing, by Ave Maria Press.