The Week 19 guide for the Online Retreat in Everyday Life is here.
This week, I’m struggling to put my experience into words, so instead of forcing words, I’m going to share a few of the excerpts that most resonated with me.
Freedom does not mean heartlessness nor insensitivity. He came to in-hearten us so that His joy may be complete in our joy. Is looking back allowed? Is longing and loving allowed in being companions with Jesus? As followers, we are called not to live compulsively obsessed. We are invited to be dedicated not dead-icated. We watch with reverence the tender scene of Jesus kissing His mother and perhaps lingering and looking back at His mother whose tears begin her son’s baptismal journey. She had said “let it be done” and now it is beginning to be done.
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Jesus is baptized and begins taking His life very personally and seriously. Ignatius asks us to move in that direction as well. Jesus did not know where this would lead Him; we do not know either, except we know that He will lead us. Tender timidity is our sense of self as we begin to immerse ourselves into Christ.
What is it, Jesus, that makes me so afraid? If I take the plunge in my life, as you have, and accept this baptism, what does it mean for my life? How will my life be turned upside down? What will I have to leave that now feels so ‘at home’? Maybe what scares me most is the question: What if I fail? What if God is asking me to do more than I am capable of?
How about you? What has Week 19 been like for you?
