Transcript of the Video Above

Daily reflections for Lenten Easter, written by Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI.

The Gospel is not as much about worthiness as it is about surrender. What God wants from us is not a million acts of virtue, but but a million acts of surrender, culminating in one massive surrender of soul, mind and body.

When we have given up everything and are completely helpless to give ourselves anything, as we will all eventually be when we face death, then salvation can be given to us.
And that’s the key.

Salvation can only be given. It can never be taken, earned or possessed by right. Nothing we have or can accumulate in this life fame, fortune, health, good looks, a good name, or even moral virtue, religious fidelity, personal sanctity, or the practice of social justice tips God’s hand towards us.

What tips God’s hand is helplessness. Surrender in grace, in the ideal order of things. Surrender is for the mature. That is less true of us during the first half of our lives, for we are still building, but it becomes the deepest truth of the second half of life.

After 40, understood religiously. Life is not about claiming worthiness or about building things, especially our own egos, but about getting in touch with helpless. Age brings us physically to our knees. And more and more everything we have so painstakingly built up begins to mean less and less. That is the order of things.

Salvation is not about great achievements, but about a great embrace. All we have to do is surrender.