Crossing a river

Sometimes we speak of prayer, other times of life with God. Nevertheless, the expression life with God contains grounds that are much more vast and complex than the expression life of prayer.

Life with God implies concrete, demanding commitments in a long process of transfiguration, a process wherein the person who prays slowly dies to those negative personality traits that are in opposition to the spirit of the Lord, and puts on the style and attitudes of Jesus.

Speaking figuratively, we could compare this with a river bank. The river has a bank on either side. We are one bank, our personalities endowed by reason of genetics with beautiful personality traits on one hand; and on the other hand, with negative factors that are opposed to the eternal values of the Gospel, yet through no guilt or merit of our own.

The other bank is that archetype that God placed in this world, and who is for all time the model of sanctification for redeemed humanity: Jesus Christ.

Our whole life should be a Passover, an eternal passing over from one bank to the other, in a never ending process of divesting ourselves of the clothes of the old man built on delusions of grandeur, as we put on the garments of patience, meekness and humility, which are the garments of the new man according to Christ Jesus.

From the book “Journey Towards God” by Fr. Ignacio Larrañaga