Let us continue to look at what Jesus taught us about the purpose of the Christian life: a life that is given to building a loving union with God deeply rooted within our very existence.
The meditation provided for April 2nd in Magnificat* is from a Carthusian monk who died in the mid 1940s. He wrote these words: "Others refuse him (God), and God seems to leave them to themselves, to what they have chosen, to follow their own way, as if he no longer looked upon them: but only as long as their refusal is obstinate and persistent, for he calls to everyone again and again." Dom Augustin Guillerand, O. Cart. saw the meaning of what Jesus said more than once: "The Father is in me and I am in you." It is that reality: There is something of God, something of the divine in each of us. Despite our failures, despite our walking away from God at different times and in different way, God is there "again and again." And why? Why would he not call the sinner, the one who walks away? He cannot do otherwise because, to cite Jesus again, "the Father is in me and just as I am in you." We should find hope in this. There is something in us that the Father loves! What is it? It is the "glory" given the Son which he has given to us. As long as there is conscious heartbeat in a body, God, so it seems, cannot not seek to bring us to himself ... because we are something of God. We are also his "glory."
Yesterday evening, standing before this particular cherry blossom tree, the Spirit moved me to consider again this incredible gift of oneness that we share with the Son and his Father. The tree, in the late afternoon sun radiated its color, its glory, the glory of God shining in the very essence of cherry trees when fully abloom. It was proclaiming in its own language: see the glory of God that is mine! It is the same for each of us. And God will always come to us again and again because we are one with him through his Son.
