Sacred Space

I’ve been using “Sacred Space – the prayer book 2008” from Jesuit Communication Center, Ireland (ave maria press, Notre Dame, IN) as a guide for my devotions.  You can find them on the web at www.sacredspace.ie This week the lead in to the scripture lessons and prayer has said: 

 

“The end of July is a significant jubilee for many Jesuits, with the feast of Saint Ignatius Loyola.  The commitment of religious vows, like that of marriage, is a solemn and free act that touches us as deeply as any act can.  This gift, of all that we are and may become, suggests the image of a silver chalice, filled with all that is precious.  Alas, it does not work out that way.

 

All of us who live by vows, whether in marriage or religious life, know that a goblet of precious wine is an inadequate image for a personal commitment.  Our lives and relationships are inevitably a mixed drink, bitter-sweet.  As we look back, over ten, or thirty, or sixty years, we can see what a mixture it was, at once richer and more painful than when we took our vows.  Only a jubilee reveals what a complicated and unexpected mixture there is.  The God we serve is a God of surprises; retrospect shows that it is his plans, not ours, that counted.  He does not call us to help him out of a jam.  He calls us because he loves us.”