Christian Meditation

"In Chapter 5 of his letter to the Romans, Paul writes
about what God has accomplished in the person of
his Son, Jesus:

´Therefore, now that we have been justified through
faith, let us continue at peace with God, through our
Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have been
allowed to enter the sphere of God´s grace, where
we now stand. Let us exult in the hope of the divine
splendour that is to be ours. Because God´s love
has flooded our inmost heart through the Holy Spirit
he has given us.´ (Rm 5:1-5).

Just think about this language for a moment and
consider the quite staggering claim it is making.

St Paul was no mere theorist. He was a passionate
announcer of a real event that he was trying to
make all men realize. His great conviction is that the
Spirit of Jesus has been sent. This is the central
conviction of our Christian faith; indeed our faith is a
living faith precisely because the living Spirit of God
dwells within us, giving new life to our mortal bodies.

"Marriage and prayer are initimately related
in Paul´s
vision of the Christian life.

In both prayer and marraige the call is to
full selfhood
by loss of self in the other. The giving of
the self
must become total. Both prayer and marraige are
creative of life because of the generosity
and faith
that enable us to lay down our lives in love.

I suppose it wouldn´t be an exaggeration to
say that
one of the principal causes of the breakdown of
so many marriages is a lack of the spirit of
obedience.

No word in the religious vocabulary is so much
misunderstood by our contemporaries as
´obedience´. Obedience is nothing else than the
capacity to listen to the other. We stray
from God
when we lose this attentiveness and no amount of
talking or thinking about God can truly
substitute for
this openness to him. The Latin root of
´obedience´ is ob-audire, to hear, to
listen.
We are
to be listeners.

Obedience here is in essence sensitivity, deep
sensitivity to the other, to the others. The
readiness to think, in the first place, of
the other and
not of oneself.

As you know, it is impossible for us to love one
another unless we serve one another".