“The
LORD is near to the brokenhearted *
and
will save those whose spirits are crushed.
Many
are the troubles of the righteous, *
but
the LORD will deliver him out of them all.”
Psalm 34; Joseph, Guardian
of Our Lord; Evening Prayer, the Daily Office, Year One
To
be with God is to have a vulnerable heart, a vulnerable life. To be righteous
is to be aware and vulnerable to the needs of the suffering of humanity and creation, and to be willing
to experience one’s own suffering with their suffering, so to serve and tend to
the needs of suffering. It is the broken heart which becomes the broken ground
ready to accept the seeds of compassion, the good soil from which the bounty of
joy is ultimately raised to the nourishment of self and others. In my experience, and with those of others, this is the realization of God’s promise. There are
times when the broken heart’s reality seems the closest intersect with God’s
presence, when the Spirit of Christ’s love is real and tangible, when the
choice is made to keep on loving, to keep risking the vulnerability Jesus, God,
experienced towards the cross and on the cross, who persisted in loving his
tormentors even to his last breath. It is at the moment of brokenness, when we
are aware of our vulnerability, and fully present in it, that the fullness of our
humanity comes into view, when too, the fullness of God within us comes into
our field of view as something real and tangible: mysteriously and
miraculously, we can still rise up again with Christ, we can still love.
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