Giving Our Life as a Ransom
- RUTH BURROWS
In the same movement in which the Son delivers himself, dedicates himself, and sacrifices himself, the Father receives, transfigures, and glorifies him.
Thus many concepts which have for us a negative ring are seen to be in a process of transfiguration. To realize our being we have to become a sacrifice with Jesus, a son in the Son. A sacrifice is a being that is not only offered but accepted, that has entered into the sphere of the divine. Self-renunciation, poverty, abandonment, dying to self, are simply movements towards God. In them we actualize our humanness and transcendence.
The offering, in no matter how small a degree, never takes place without a corresponding acceptance, a passing over into God. This is the mystery of Death and Resurrection, our share in the Paschal Mystery of Christ. It goes on hour by hour, day by day. It can be completed only in actual physical death. Then self-donation will be total.
In this context we can grasp that the experience of poverty, helplessness, and other painful things are really glory in disguise.
In Jesus we have everything. Let us trust him to bring us to that fulfillment for which we long, knowing that even as we die, resurrection is burgeoning in our barren hearts.
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Acknowledgement
Ruth Burrows. "Giving Our Life as a Ransom." from Through Him, With Him, in Him: Meditations on the Liturgical Seasons (London, UK: Sheed & Ward Ltd., 1987).
Reprinted by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing.
The Author
Sister Ruth Burrows is a Carmelite nun at Quidenham in Norfolk, England. She is author of Guidelines for Mystical Prayer, Essence of Prayer, and To Believe in Jesus.
