When I look into my crystal ball to see what the future will bring, I see two distinct possibilities: the first is that we voluntarily renounce the world, the flesh and the devil, (as those terms are understood in the Patristic texts…) expressly to draw closer to God and to become more and more like Him

Or secondly, we allow the outer circumstances of our lives to strip us of everything superfluous in our lives in order to accomplish the same thing.

And, let me tell you, as difficult as it is for us to voluntarily renounce the world, the flesh and the devil for God's sake, and as unwilling as we are to do so, the outer circumstances of our lives are much less subtle in their methods and in the means they employ to achieve the same ends!

Why do we find it difficult to cooperate voluntarily with the Spiritual Law? Is it because we are bad people? No! On the contrary! It is because the good things that we want for ourselves and for each other usually fall far short of the Greater Good Things that God has in mind for us.

These other priorities that we have developed have a habit of keeping us from what God Intends for us and then, it may take a few ‘shocks' to reorient us

May the Good Lord help us to ‘cut across’ to what we already know is true so that we need only a minimal amount of ‘shocks’ to wake us up and keep us awake.