In love with love
“Often I go off in dreams about living and being with the poor, but what the poor need are not my dreams, my beautiful thoughts, my inner reflections, but my concrete presence. There is always the temptation to replace real presence with lovely thoughts about being present”.
[Jean Vanier, one of the founders of the L’Arche community for mentally disabled people, as quoted by Henri Nouwen in “The Road to Daybreak”]
At the end of the day, abstract mental exercises, lofty ideals and personal dreams will do absolutely nothing to make life better for one single person in this world.
God save me from all notions of “missions” and “service” that is merely intellectual vanity masquerading as spirituality. Such a delusion stands afar off and theologises or moralises with words while withholding the active good one is capable of doing. It skirts every sacrifice and projects any personal obedience into the distant future.
The love that we offer to the poor must be as real and tangible as the bread that was broken, and the wine that was offered to those twelve men, on that fateful night two thousand years ago.
[Jean Vanier, one of the founders of the L’Arche community for mentally disabled people, as quoted by Henri Nouwen in “The Road to Daybreak”]
At the end of the day, abstract mental exercises, lofty ideals and personal dreams will do absolutely nothing to make life better for one single person in this world.
God save me from all notions of “missions” and “service” that is merely intellectual vanity masquerading as spirituality. Such a delusion stands afar off and theologises or moralises with words while withholding the active good one is capable of doing. It skirts every sacrifice and projects any personal obedience into the distant future.
The love that we offer to the poor must be as real and tangible as the bread that was broken, and the wine that was offered to those twelve men, on that fateful night two thousand years ago.
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