Friday, April 19, 2013

The Danger of the Damascus Road



Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in Love in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.
It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in Love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.
Fr. Pedro Arrupe

This quote summarizes St. Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus: a brief encounter with the risen person of Jesus Christ.  He experienced Jesus, personally and intimately.  In that moment, Jesus revealed the fullness of the scriptures to Paul, a good and studied Pharisee.  Paul saw how Jesus was the Word, and the Word was Jesus.  It was not an educational moment, it was not even an enlightening moment.  It was a moment of transformation.  He fell in love with Jesus.  Jesus seized his imagination.  And it affected everything.

I grew up with, and spent a good part of my adult life in a Christian experience that did not look like this.  Great parents, Catholic grade school, high school seminary, Jesuit university, fairly well formed.  Yet, in the deepest levels of my being, in my heart of hearts, the passion and love for Jesus described by Fr. Arrupe, and experienced by Paul, were not my mine.  They were my yearning, but not my experience.

Over the last few years, I’ve had my own Damascus Road experience.  I’ve encountered Jesus, His mercy, His love, His compassion, His strength, His power, His counsel.  Those encounters with Jesus, where I open myself to Him and receive His grace, are places of healing.  The Sacraments and the life of the Church have become a place of encounter with the person of Jesus Christ, where He meets me in all the messiness that is my life, where He heals, where He transforms.

I’ve been witness to many others who have had a Damascus Road experience as well.  A woman I know recently said to me, “The lie that I’ve been believing is that I’m invisible to God.  Now, I know…that He sees me…”  That is a Damascus Road experience.  Transformation.  Jesus spoke a simple truth to a deep-seated lie, and everything changed.  Where her heart had been broken, there was now joy and gratitude.

Transformation is not for the faint of heart.  It is not for those seeking the safety and comfort of complacency and worldliness, because Jesus has more for us than that.  Jesus offers Life, Freedom, and Love.  It is, for me, an essential dimension of  the “New Evangelization”.   Personal encounter with Jesus- true, honest, deep encounter is the very heart of the Church.  Simply because:
 it will seize your imagination, 
it will get you out of bed in the morning,
 it will decide what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends, 
what you read, whom you know, 
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. 
Fall in Love, stay in love, and it will decide everything!

Welcome to the Damascus Road

1 comment:

  1. Good stuff Ken! Keep putting it out there- you live it! Thanks for being a living example of encountering Jesus in everyday life! UDAMAN! Well, actually, HE is the Man, that you represent well :-)

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