I am reading Romano Guardini's The Art of Praying, and I recommend it to you all. It's a gentle, step by step look at prayer: why we should, what kinds there are, to whom we pray, etc.
While I was at Adoration Friday, this jumped out at me, from a section about the Holy Spirit:
The Holy Spirit teaches us to understand Christ, and in Christ, God and ourselves. It is the kind of understanding which comes from the heart, not from the intellect. It is true comprehension, more than that, it is illumination.
The Holy Spirit gives the answers to those questions which the mind cannot answer because the mind invariably couples the word why with the word I. "Why must I endure this suffering? Why am I denied what others have? Why must I be the way I am, live the way I do?" These are some of the most essential and decisive questions in the life of the individual, and to those questions men and books remain silent. The true answer comes only when our heart is free from revolt and bitterness: when our will has come to terms with life as it is for us, recognizing in it the working of the will of God.
This was what I needed to hear on Friday. It had been a hard and troubling week. (Did you notice I was pretty much gone from here? You did, didn't you?)
And this reminded me of what we had discussed one time at a Bible Study. We got into the whole "the road is narrow" discussion. How can the road to Heaven be so narrow when there are so many of us trying to be on it?
And I think it was Smockdaddy who came up with the answer for me: It's narrow, because it's my road. It's what it takes to get me there. We can see other people walking their roads, and if they fall we can reach over and help them up. And our paths may even converge for awhile, so that we can help them, or they can help us. And our paths are close enough together to give us companionship on the trip.
But in the end, we are all walking an individual path. A path to the Father big enough for ONE. And it's not going to be like anyone else's path. Holiness is unique, not "one size fits all", which really means "one size fits nobody."
