An excerpt from John Main OSB, “The Way of Love” in The hunger for depth and meaning, ed. Peter Ng (Singapore: Medio Media, 2007), p. 182, 183.
The greatest theological statement ever made was made by St. John when he said: “God is love.”
The saying of the mantra is an act of pure selflessness. Every time we say the mantra, we renounce, we leave behind our thoughts, our concerns, our hopes, our fears. In saying the mantra we become “the eye that sees but cannot see itself.”
In saying our mantra, in the daily return to the discipline, we gradually learn to look beyond ourselves. We learn to see with a vision that focuses itself ahead of us, in God. And in that focusing of everything that we are, everything in our life becomes aligned on God and . . . everything falls into place.
Meditation is so powerful because it leads us into a [new] order, a tranquility, a peace. This is so because our order of values changes. Instead of being based on self, on the ego, on success, on self-promotion, on all these limiting factors, our values system becomes based on God. We discover in the revelation that takes place in our heart, the revelation when we discover the presence of Jesus there, that God is love.
This brings us to the conclusion that unleashes great power—that there is only one thing that matters ultimately, which is that we grow in love. Everything else is secondary. Everything else is consequential.
After meditation: “Finding a Teacher,” W. S. Merwin, MIGRATION: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2005), pp. 206-207
Credo
I sing the will to love:
the will that carves the will to live,
the will that saps the will to hurt,
the will that kills the will to die;
the will that made and keeps you warm,
the will that points your eyes ahead,
the will that makes you give, not get,
a give and get that tell us what you are:
how much a god, how much a human.
I call on you to live the will to love.
