Taking responsibility for ourselves

Although the Easter presence of the Risen Christ is there—we can feel it—it doesn’t push us out of our place as we tend to do to each other when egos jostle for power or influence. But Jesus doesn’t do that. And yet he’s very influential. To follow him, therefore, is life-changing. It may take a life time before we can really say we are following and yet we can begin and he will take us then through the same human process that he passed through of laying down his life and raising it up again. Reducing the ego day by day, little by little, learning not to externalize our internal conflicts, but to deal with our own internal conflicts ourselves. That’s the work of meditation: take responsibility for ourselves, do the inner work first, reducing the ego little by little to nothing. Laying down our life, taking it up again, so that we can serve the unity of all which is actually in the mission statement of the WCCM: to serve the unity of all. 

(Homily 21 April 2024 by Laurence Freeman OSB )