Pondering Becoming

As we age and realize God never forgets to offer us grace, wisdom, strength, insight and understanding we take in the marvel of becoming whom God is inviting us to be individually and collectively.  Each of us is God’s beloved child.  All of us are God’s beloved family.  Cistercian authors through the centuries have invited believers to ponder the unwavering love of God and get more in touch with being the recipient of divine love.  Less academic in approach while encouraging reflection on one’s own experience, being very deliberate in being present to the present, cultivating one’s capacity to attend to God with us, heightens the sensitivity to the work God is bringing about in us, for us and through us.  It is amazing to consciously  remain in a framework of seeking to know the invitation God is offering us. Ask yourself – what does God want?  Ask yourself – what do I want?  Give time to be with the questions and allow yourself to acknowledge what you don’t know or understand and what you do hope for and what you truly desire.  In a time when our monasteries are shrinking and some monasteries are going out of existence, when the numbers are fewer and the older members exceed the younger members, ask – God what are you telling us?  For the Cistercian heritage is less controlling the outcome and more responding to the initiatives God wants us to embrace for this time.  Are we becoming whom God is inviting us to be?  In “Unless you become like this child”, Hans Urs von Balthasar tells us – “God defines himself as “I am who I am”, which also means: My being is such that I shall always be present in every moment of becoming.”  There is an invitation to ponder the becoming that is before us and choose to walk with God and in God to that which God is bringing about in God’s immense love.  Surrendering fear, anxiety and worry (in the gospels the most repeated phrase is ‘fear not’) we acknowledge that we stand in uncertainty, claiming the hope and trust that are ours by way of faith because the evidence is everywhere that God never gives up on us.  God loves us without measure.  All this bringing us to ask God to guide us forward, asking God to be the light for our steps (as the psalmist tells us), taking us into the reality that God desires for us.