Becoming a disciple takes time. Sometimes I think I am just beginning to get it. Not even sure I’ve got it now, but certain things make more sense…years intervene while the convert (monk) struggles to become what he is. Michael Casey in an article on PATIENCE:
Length of years is not that important when I think about my path towards God. I may have short periods when I may fool myself that at last I have arrived….but then reality sets in and things fall apart.
Control over ones path is not possible for we are led more than we may choose to follow. Once we give our ‘yes’ something deep happens within the soul, it is as if we have been marked or branded. Perhaps it is so in any walk of life, in any passion that we have.
In seeking to grow in understanding and love I soon learn that when I grasp at it, it soon turns to dust. So I begin again, perhaps a little wiser to the nature of God’s love and grace. God draws near, and then withdraws and I am left holding air. Yet in this process something deeper is going on beyond my conscious thought or control, it is a way of unknowing rather than knowing. I think I know, then after a short time it goes down the rabbit hole.
Jesus shows me the face of the Father, yet he himself is the Word, that which was present at the beginning of the universe, or as it is now called the cosmos. I can experience ‘it’, but do I understand at all. Sometimes I think I do, and then at other times I just run in the dark….yet faith remains.
Faith and surety are not the same. Surety in any manner is the real illusion, faith is however eternal. Yet in faith I need trust, in seeking surety there is not the need for trust, it is about seeking knowledge and proof.
So I am not yet what I say I am, just on the way, but I have faith that grace will finish what it began.
Br. Mark Dohle, OCSO
Holy Spirit Monastery
