Our Mission
We are a center for experiential education, rooted in the Gospels, encouraging the transformation of human consciousness through contemplation, and equipping people to be instruments of peaceful change in the world.
May 31, 2011
The Annunciation (detail), Henry Ossawa Tanner, Paris, France 1898,
The Philadelphia Museum of Art. http://www.philamuseum.org
Mary, Icon of Receptivity
We tend to manage life more than just live it. We are trained to be managers and engineers of sorts, to organize life, to make things happen. This is surely built into our American culture, and probably into human nature itself. It is not all bad; the ego needs a job. But if you transfer that to the spiritual life, it is always heresy. It doesn’t work. It is not gospel. We might be productive and even popular and politically correct, but we will not be spiritually fertile or free. It will not have the purity and freedom of God's work. The soul has a different job than the ego, it seems.
Mary was trustfully, invisibly carrying the full Mystery during this time when she traveled alone to visit her cousin Elizabeth. What an ordinary task of womanly caring—nothing inherently “religious” at all. She knew how to receive and how to hold spiritual gifts, and knew that they have to be given away to be maintained, deepened, or understood.
Adapted from Preparing for Christmas, p. 31
Starter Prayer:
Here I am Lord;
I come to do your will.
If you are inspired by Fr. Richard's Daily Meditations,
please consider receiving both
Radical Grace, the publication of the CAC
and visiting the CAC Mustard Seed Resource Center!
