Daily Thought For January 7, 2022

 The Quest For True Freedom

Man must leave himself behind if he hopes to have even a glimpse of his true potentialities. But the surrender of the self is the thing we find most difficult to accomplish and so rarely succeed. To the modern mind it makes no sense because we have lost any concept of the boundless glory, the shimmering, unlimited wonder of the divine to which we gain access by yielding up our own limited personality. Only when we trim our sails to the eternal winds do we begin to understand the sort of journey we are capable of undertaking. Only by voluntary, unreserved surrender to God can we find our home. Any other sort of refuge is only a temporary shelter, a poor hovel on shifting sand destined eventually to fall in ruins. Adoration in a stable is preferable to terror before a throne. There is much wisdom in the ancient teaching about the passing of the soul 10425695-outstretched-empty-hands-over-a-grundge-concrete-backgoundbecause it embodies the idea that man can only become himself by stepping outside himself. Pray and praise are the two key words to human liberty. The kneeling attitude with outstretched hands is the correct attitude for a free man.

Our age, like those before us, has tried many others. But the life-urge is very strong in any man of genuine feeling and it keeps forcing him back to his own potentialities. We found it very hard to let go of beautiful things. But in the end we have to. We came to the stable by a road which was laborious, terrifying and blood-soaked and this miserable dwelling was at the end of it. Our hands are empty—more than empty. They are torn and bleeding because things literally had to be wrenched from their grasp. But in spite of everything we can hear and recognize the call, if we can discover the inner meaning of the grim experience through which we are passing and if in the midst of this frightfulness we can learn to pray, then this hell will bring forth a new man and a blessed hour will strike for the troubled earth in the middle of the night—as it has so often before.

The fate of mankind, my own fate, the verdict awaiting me, the significance of the feast, can all be summed up in the sentence surrender thyself to God and thou shalt find thyself again. Others have you in their power now; they torture and frighten you, hound you from pillar to post. But the inner law of freedom sings that no death can kill us; life is eternal. Pray and praise—the fundamental words of life, the steep roads to God, the doors that lead to fulfillment, the ways that lead a man to his true self.

Alfred Delp, S.J.