My spiritual mentor posted this recently. I think it is very timely for me in regards to school, ministry, and the upcoming season of Lent.
This excerpt is from Henri Nouwen's The Way of the Heart
“We enter into solitude first of all to meet our Lord and to be with him and him alone….Only in the context of grace can we face our sin; only in the place of healing do we dare to show our wounds; only with a single-minded attention to Christ can we give up our clinging fears and face our own true nature….[W]e come to realize that it is not we who live, but Christ who lives in us, that he is our true self….Precisely because our secular [and religious] milieu offers us so few spiritual disciplines, we have to develop our own. We have, indeed, to fashion our own desert where we can withdraw every day, shake off our compulsions, and dwell in the gentle healing presence of our Lord. Without such a desert we will lose our own soul while preaching the gospel to others….[We] need to…set apart a time and a place to be with God and him alone….[L]ike all great disciples of Jesus, Mother Teresa affirmed…the truth that ministry can be fruitful only if it grows out of a direct and intimate encounter with our Lord” (20-21).
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