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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240419
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CREATED:20240413T201117Z
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UID:11811-1713484800-1713571199@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org
SUMMARY:Vigils Reading
DESCRIPTION:THE CRUCIAL CHALLENGE \nOF OUR CHRISTIAN FAITH \nBy Thomas Merton \n◊◊◊ \nThe season of Lent summoned us to change our hearts\, to effect in \nourselves the Christian metanoia. But at the same time Lent has reminded us \nperhaps all too clearly of our own powerlessness to change our lives in any way. \nLent in the liturgical year plays the role of the Law\, the pedagogue\, who \nconvinces us of sin and inflicts upon us the crushing evidence of our own \nnothingness. Hence it disquiets and sobers us\, awakening in us perhaps some \nsense of that existential “dread” of the creature whose freedom suspends him \nover an abyss which may be an infinite meaninglessness\, and unbounded \ndespair. This is the fruit of that Law which judges our freedom together with its \npowerlessness to impose full meaning on our lives merely by conforming to a \nmoral code. Is there nothing more than this? \nBut now the power of Easter has burst upon us with the resurrection of \nChrist. Now we find in ourselves a strength which is not our own\, and which is \nfreely given to us whenever we need it\, raising us above the Law\, giving us a new \nlaw which is hidden in Christ: the law of his merciful love for us. Now we no \nlonger strive to be good because we have to\, because it is a duty\, but because our \njoy is to please him who has given all his love to us! Now our life is full of \nmeaning. \nEaster is the hour of our own deliverance–from what? Precisely from \nLent and from its hard Law which accuses and judges our infirmity. We are no \nlonger under the Law. We are delivered from the harsh judgment! Here is all \nthe greatness and all the unimaginable splendor of the Easter mystery. Here is \nthe “grace” of Easter which we fail to lay hands on because we are afraid to \nunderstand its full meaning. To understand Easter and live it\, we must \nrenounce our dread of newness and of freedom! \nDeath exercises a twofold power in our lives: it holds us by sin\, and it \nholds us by the Law. To die to death and live a new life in Christ we must die \nnot only to sin but also to the Law. \nEvery Christian knows that he must die to sin. But the great truth that St \nPaul exhausted himself to preach in season and out is a truth that we Christians \nhave barely grasped\, a truth that has got away from us\, that constantly eludes \nus and has continued to do so for twenty centuries. We cannot get it into our \nheads what it means to be no longer slaves of the Law. And the reason is that \nwe do not have the courage to face this truth which contains in itself the crucial \nchallenge of our Christian faith\, the great reality that makes Christianity \ndifferent from every other religion. \n  \n6 New York: Farrar\, Straus & Giroux\, 1965\, pp. 145-146.12 \n 
URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-183/
CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings
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