Week Four, Exercise One: Jesus Meets Us Where We Are

This exercise should be experienced between January 8 and 11.

As we continue in Phase Two of the Exercises, we recall how Jesus came to us in the form a vulnerable child. Take a moment to relish those Christmas graces. How amazing for God to come to humanity in the poverty, beauty, and neediness of a human child. It makes us think of the gentle way that God communicates. He does not hit us with the taskmaster's rod. He reveals himself as vulnerable as we are vulnerable. This truth is expressed in a very insightful way by Ignatian spiritual director and author Margaret Silf. In the twelfth chapter of her book Inner Compass, she writes:

My old school had the Gospel words interpreted by Chaucer as its motto: "And trouthe shal set thee free."

I lived with them for some years, emblazoned on my uniform and resounding out of every end-of-term assembly when we sang the school song. Gradually they insinuated themselves into my heart and sat there like an egg waiting for fertilization. It took over thirty years for that egg to come to ripeness, but when that finally happened, it took on a life of its own, as eggs do.

I knew all this when I began to think about these questions, and I knew, too, how central they are to any exploration of our inner landscape. But it was a bleak November evening when something clicked into place that helped me to take hold of the scale of the question, and it had to do with the matter of the gap. Let me explain.

The words that triggered my understanding that evening would have seemed trite, had they not been spoken by someone who had obviously found them in the depths of his own experience.
God comes to us, he said

*not where we should have been if we had made all the right choices in life,
*not where we could have been if we had taken every opportunity that God has offered us,
*not where we wish we were if we didn't have to be in the place where we find ourselves,
*not where we think we are because our minds are out of sync wtih our hearts,
*not where other people think we are or think we ought to be when they are attending to their own agendas.

I had heard this kind of wisdom often enough before. That God meets us where we really are is, after all, commonplace throughout our journeying. We all know that with our heads, but that evening I suddenly grasped the truth of it with my heart, and that moment of truth brought me a new degree of freedom--just as Jesus had said it would! (134-135)


As we contemplate Silf's words and continue along the path of contemplating the life of Christ, let us ask

*Where am I at this point in my life? Am I stuck in any situations that foster unfreedom and attachment? What does Jesus want to say to me in this situation?

Also, let's just soak in the truth that God meets us where we are in the person of Christ (or if we are not Christian, God meets us where we are in my own spiritual tradition). What does it mean that God does not meet us where we wish we were or where other people think we should be? What does it mean that God meets us where we are? Can we feel the freedom of that? Do we need to ask God for the freedom this truth gives?

Spend some time with the Lord. Perhaps just let the Lord put his arm around your shoulders and let him tell you: "I am here with you now, in the situation you are in now. I do not reject you. I accept you as you are, now!"

What do we want to tell the Lord now?

Consider these truths as we move into the hidden years of Jesus and into his public ministry.

Close with a prayer in your tradition.