Daily Reading for May 11
If you feel no sense of God’s presence within you when you pray, why worry? There is no precise dividing-line between emptiness and fullness, any more than between doubt and faith, or fear and love. The essential is always concealed from your own eyes. But that only makes you more eager than ever to progress towards the one reality. Then, gradually, it becomes possible to sense something of the depth and the breadth of a love beyond all comprehension. At that point you touch the gates of contemplation, and there you draw the energy you need for new beginnings, for daring commitments. . . .
You are never alone. Let yourself be plumbed to the depths, and you will realize that everyone is created for a presence. There, in your heart of hearts, in that place where no two people are alike, Christ is waiting for you. And there the unexpected happens.
In a flash, the love of God, the Holy Spirit, streaks through each one of us like lightning in our night. The risen Christ takes hold of you, and he takes over. He takes upon himself everything that is unbearable. It is only later, sometimes much later, that you realize: Christ came, he gave his overflowing life. The moment your eyes are opened you will say, “My heart was burning within me as he spoke.”
From “A Life We Never Dared Hope For,” a letter to his brothers from Brother Roger, quoted in Parable of Community: The Rule and Other Basic Texts of Taizé by Brother Roger (New York: Seabury Press, 1981).