C
contemplative
Guest
PROLOGUE
Every believer is as ‘amen’ who will become an ‘alleluia’
I am what my father thought, I am what my mother prayed for.
I am the labour of my forebears.
I am their hopes, their sicknesses, their healings.
I am their loves, their struggles, even their blasphemies and their sins.
I am their dawns and sunsets, their pitiless winters, their thrilling springtimes, their blazing summers, their tranquil autumns.
I am their births and their deaths.
Scientists at one time used to speak, perhaps they still do, about heredity and, I think, about chromosomes and genes. I am no expert in that field. But I am quite sure that in me, in my life and in my actions, there is present everything that those who existed before me ever did: all their struggles, their failures, their successes.
My freedom is tinged with the colour of their freedom, whatever it was like: more or less bright, more or less sombre, more or less filled with laughter.
When I make a choice, it is the latest choice, the most recent act of millions of people who form a single chain from far distant Adam right down to me.
In the cradle of my freedom are hatched the countless eggs of the lives preceding mine.
No one is an island. No freedom is isolated.
Christians bring the Church to birth
Each of us ought to realize this fact: each one of us is also the Church.
The Church belongs to the second Adam, the Christ. From his side dripping blood and water on the hill of the skull, God took the Church, while the eyes of the Crucified were closing for their three days’ sleep.
When on the third day the New Adam awoke, he embraced the Church and made her fruitful with his Spirit.
From then on, the children of the Church are without number. They have overflowed the continents and the centuries.
From the beginning, they were conscious of being God’s new prophets, called to populate the earth and to point the human race towards the ‘last times’.
This is the first part of prologue written by Cardinal Thomas Spidlik centroaletti.com/en/e-spidlik.htm
The book is titled Drinking from the Hidden Fountain
Drinking from the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary
Every believer is as ‘amen’ who will become an ‘alleluia’
I am what my father thought, I am what my mother prayed for.
I am the labour of my forebears.
I am their hopes, their sicknesses, their healings.
I am their loves, their struggles, even their blasphemies and their sins.
I am their dawns and sunsets, their pitiless winters, their thrilling springtimes, their blazing summers, their tranquil autumns.
I am their births and their deaths.
Scientists at one time used to speak, perhaps they still do, about heredity and, I think, about chromosomes and genes. I am no expert in that field. But I am quite sure that in me, in my life and in my actions, there is present everything that those who existed before me ever did: all their struggles, their failures, their successes.
My freedom is tinged with the colour of their freedom, whatever it was like: more or less bright, more or less sombre, more or less filled with laughter.
When I make a choice, it is the latest choice, the most recent act of millions of people who form a single chain from far distant Adam right down to me.
In the cradle of my freedom are hatched the countless eggs of the lives preceding mine.
No one is an island. No freedom is isolated.
Christians bring the Church to birth
Each of us ought to realize this fact: each one of us is also the Church.
The Church belongs to the second Adam, the Christ. From his side dripping blood and water on the hill of the skull, God took the Church, while the eyes of the Crucified were closing for their three days’ sleep.
When on the third day the New Adam awoke, he embraced the Church and made her fruitful with his Spirit.
From then on, the children of the Church are without number. They have overflowed the continents and the centuries.
From the beginning, they were conscious of being God’s new prophets, called to populate the earth and to point the human race towards the ‘last times’.
This is the first part of prologue written by Cardinal Thomas Spidlik centroaletti.com/en/e-spidlik.htm
The book is titled Drinking from the Hidden Fountain
Drinking from the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary