DAILY MEDITATION (MONDAY, AUGUST 24)

MEDITATION OF THE DAY

How We Are Known

The divine knowledge of a soul is always a merciful knowledge. We can never be in a true relationship with God until we discover that we are only known mercifully. Not just loved with intermittent mercy after sinning and repenting once again, but that we cannot be looked at, that we cannot be known by God or drawn to him except as a soul in need, poor and destitute, incapable of avoiding collapse and ruin without divine intervention.

A profound mercy, in other words, permeates God’s vision of our soul. On our part, faithfulness to this mercy is to keep an awareness of the divine gaze upon our soul. It is to know ourselves as known by God in mercy. The soul conscious of mercy enters into prayer in poverty and need, but it also knows God’s presence as a gaze of love upon its poverty. And its confidence in mercy becomes an implicit wonder and admiration directed toward God’s attraction for the poverty at the heart of our soul.

Father Donald Haggerty

Father Haggerty, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, is currently serving at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. [From Conversion: Spiritual Insights into an Essential Encounter with God. © 2017, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, CA. www.ignatius.com. Used with permission.]