Rod Dreher's new book, How Dante Can Save Your Life, comes out this month, and he's been blogging about the book for the last few weeks now. Yesterday, he posted a particularly interesting passage and meditation, and I thought it was appropriate for these last days before Pascha. It has been a difficult Lent, in many ways--death, sickness, and sorrow have dogged me this season. I've tried to accept it, to not complain, to take the suffering as part of this season, to say "Glory to God for all things" and really mean it (more on that later), but it has been hard. The excerpt below gave me a few things to ponder.
"If I believed with all my heart that my suffering could purify me, would I run from it with such vigor? This canto invited me to think about how the physical and spiritual struggles I had been through since coming home had at times brought me closer to God—and how my own bruised ego had, at other times, pushed him away.
'I am a glutton for food and drink, no doubt, but I am also a glutton to feed my soul on other things that I cannot have. On this terrace, I grasped the nature of my hunger, my craving, for approval and acceptance by my family. I wanted it so much that I had made it more important than the hunger for God."
~Rod Dreher, Dante and the Fruits of Patience, April 6, 2015
Thanks for sharing that passage. Praying for you!
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