Looking Back

I was so devout in my early days. The fervor has not died or grown weak, but is now rather older and deeper, less on the surface than at one with ordinary action. Sometimes there is a desire to go back to those early days and the discipline that accompanied them, which gave me the feeling that I was, indeed, seeking - and finding - God. The discipline and fervor of the life I live now is more rooted in the ordinary. 

What began in those early days was the seed of today's grace, and it must continue to grow, but without being in any way spectacular or drawing attention to itself (Fenelon: "Beware the humility that can speak its own name"). In my younger days there was a great deal of wanting to be noticed for my weariness of the world, love of silence and the urge to solitude. True as all that may have been true then, it was too self-conscious to be very deep. God made up for my limitations, as God does for each of us.

Now I live, not as someone who has cut herself off from the world, found the solitude, and wants the world to know it, but as a person who hopes to serve - without knowing it - God's plan to be revealed in the world and to the world. This, then, makes clearer to me what it means to be - "Hidden with Christ in God".