Personalist meditation of the day

Katie van Schaijik | Sep 10, 2012 | 2 cmts

Today's Magnificat meditation, which comes from John Janaro (whose name is not familiar to me) is beautifully personalistic.

My trials have opened my eyes, my ears, and my heart to something I never noticed in my youth.  Maybe it is because I have finally started listening to people.  The fact is that many people are suffering, many of them more than I.  Indeed, suffering is deeper than the immediate external struggles that engage most of us.  Everyone has something missing in life, something that has disappointed, something that does not measure up to a once-cherished hope, something that inhibits freedom, some burden that tires, some hunger that is never satisfied.

People usually accommodate themselves to reduced expectations about life, especially as they get older.  How else could they get through the day?  Sometimes, however, one can still catch an echo of a cry of pain, that deep and mysterious pain at the heart of every human life.  Life is, in some measure, always something that has to be endured.

Why is this?  We suffer because of sin: original sin, our own personal sins, and the sins of the world.  We suffer in Christ, who is God's love made personal and particular for each on of us.  Jesus is God drawn close to our wounded humanity, so close that he takes upon himself—not merely in some general way but in a way that encompasses each one of us.

Note the themes of listening, of suffering, of interiority, mystery, freedom, of need and vulnerability, of personal uniqueness, and of love. I've just ordered his book, Never Give up: My Life and God's Mercy.