Love Matters are wisdom words from Fr. Thomas Keating spoken during the filming of the new series God is Love: The Heart of All Creation. Some are included in the series; others are from footage published here for the first time. A new word will be posted every Monday throughout the year. May they serve to inspire hope and lift your heart.
English Transcript
To single-out one thing that is the necessity in the beginning of our spiritual life: to meditate every day sufficient to balance the activities of our day. If you don’t do that, the activities however well motivated, over time will likely wear you out, exhaust you, or you will suffer from burn-out and then you get discouraged and then you say this is more than I can do. God is never asking us to do more than we can do. To stretch is one thing but to overvalue or over-believe in the things that we can do when we really don’t have the inner resources to sustain them is just a lack of experience and so by daily practice we further the values of the Gospel and the contemplative dimension of life in such a way that we perceive our exaggerations and are constantly renewing our basic motivation and intentionality.
Si destacamos una cosa entre todas que es necesaria al comienzo de nuestra vida espiritual esta es el meditar todos los días, lo suficiente para contrarrestar las actividades de nuestro día. Si así no lo hacemos, las actividades, nos importa lo bueno que sea su motivo, al cabo de un tiempo nos desgastan, nos dejan exhaustos, o sufrimos de agotamiento mental, nos desanimamos y nos decimos que es más de lo que podemos hacer. Dios nunca nos pide que hagamos más de lo que podemos. Esforzarse es una cosa, pero creer que podemos hacer demasiado o sobrevalorar lo que podemos hacer cuando en realidad no tenemos los recursos internos para sostenerlo es simplemente falta de experiencia, y por eso, por medio de la práctica diaria, fomentamos los valores del Evangelio y la dimensión contemplativa de la vida de tal modo que percibimos nuestras exageraciones y constantemente renovamos nuestra motivación básica y nuestra intención.
