Maya Angelu, the American poet and author, is a wise woman and a spiritual one too. She tells how one day she had a religious awakening. It happened in a very simple manner. She was in her twenties and had just moved to San Francisco.
She says that at that time the was an acting agnostic. It wasn’t that she had stopped believing in God; it was just that God didn’t seem to be around the neighbourhoods she frequented. Then a voice teacher introduced her to a book entitled Lessons in Truth. She tells how one day the teacher asked her to read to him from the book:
I was twenty four, very erudite. very worldly. He asked me to read a section which ended with the words, ‘God loves me.’ I read the piece and closed the book, and the teacher said, ’Read it again.’ I pointedly opened the book, and sarcastically read. ’God loves me.’ He said, ‘Again.’ After about the seventh repetition I began to sense that there might be truth in the statement, there was a possibility that God really did love me. Yes, me, Maya Angelu.
Suddenly I began to cry at the grandness of it all. I knew that if God loved me, then I could do wonderful things. I could try great things, learn anything, achieve anything. For what could stand against me when God was with me, since any person with God constitutes the majority.
For Maya Angelu, though she believed, God seemed very remote and unreal. It is only when she became convinced that God loved her that God became real for her. Then that belief energised her. Suddenly she felt that she could do anything, face anything since God loved her and was with her.
The Church tells me that, as a Christian, I share with you the priestly offering of your sacrifice of Calvary, and you tell me that whilst doing so I must have nothing against my brothers and sisters.
Make me understand that a spirit of forgiveness is truly a priestly task, and that others more readily seek your forgiveness if I do not withhold my own.
We are all priestly in this in the presence of Jesus.
CHRIST INVITES US TO JOIN HIM IN HIS IN HIS LOVE AND GLORY.
with love and prayers, Fr Michael