Reflections of God's Glory

Just a few ruminations from this past weekend...Saturday as I was driving into New Orleans, I began to contemplate about a friend who was complaining that another friend was indifferent towards her and she couldn't understand why. I can't say exactly how I came about this thought but it struck me that in human relations perhaps the problem is that we are turned or focused inwardly on the internal with concerns about how we feel or why something happens to us and that if we "turned" or "rotated" towards the external and placed our concerns towards the "other" we may begin to understand. Of course that is exactly how Jesus would like us to view things. Turning from the internal to the external paradoxically reveals us and yet frees us. St Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians 2:3-4 :

"Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but (also) everyone for those of others."

How difficult it is to regard others more important than yourselves! And yet by "dying" to ourselves, we are not prisoners of our own feelings constrained by "how we feel" or "how much we are bothered" or "how important we are." Jesus was also a great teacher of human relations. In the field of psychology, of which I personally know a thing about, the focus of much therapy is about how "we feel" and in many cases the solutions is take something that alters how you feel.

Another paradox is of course that in our quest to know God we journey best by turning inwardly. That is, we are to relate to our Creator from our inner being, the who that we really are. In the two greatest commandments we give to God our whole heart, soul, and mind - that requires our all our internal being. Tied to that is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves - that requires our turning towards our neighbor the external. In my thoughts I see we take from God the beauty, the love, the mercy, (faith, hope and charity) and reflect the light of Christ towards our neighbor so that they see what we see- God in all His splendor. In doing that were truly doing all things for the greater glory of God.