Passiontide

Passiontide

When you listen carefully to the words of the Act of Consecration of Man you will eventually notice that a few times something is lacking.  Although in itself the text is perfect, it sounds as if some sentences are not complete.  The verb is lacking:

Christ in us

Christ in the lifting of our hands

Christ’s light in our daylight

These sentences move in a realm between possibility, wish, and full reality.  Is Christ fully in us?  Or is that a wish? A prayer? A promise?

The only thing we know for sure is that He is usually not in us, when we are busy with our everyday things.

Christ in the lifting of our hands—that does not happen all by itself just by lifting up our hands.

Christ’s light in our daylight—it has not yet appeared, but we, He and I together, have to make this possibility a reality.

At this time of year, we enter a world of darkness that shows us from all sides: Christ is not in us—on the contrary.  For now, we find ourselves in a state of isolation and deprivation, far from the light of Christ.  Passiontide is a time of disillusion, of painful diagnosis of our human shortcomings, in which we have to accept how poor we are, since we lost the spirit.

Ask the Savior for healing.

Pray for Christ’s light in our daylight.

Lift up your hands as a beggar for the Spirit—and He will stretch out His hands to you.

Ask, pray, seek—and it shall be given to you.

–Rev. Bastiaan Baan, March 14, 2021