Reinstitution

What, really, is upward mobility? What is progress?

Asking a third time whether Peter loved him truly, Jesus commissions his wayward lamb to be a shepherd. Truly, truly, he emphasized. I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.

Who was i listening to, then, when i believed that when i was young, I was completely dependent and inhibited, but with maturity would come independence, freedom and power of choice, and thus the right to forge my way...? That to the extent my leadership coerced complex casts and smoothed their settings, the confused and anxious would flock to me and there find transformation?

My desire to grow, serve, lead, was still a desire to control and influence.

Christ's vision of maturity, in contrast: The willing fortitude to be led to difficult, undesirable unknowns.

I write not of the psychologically impotent leadership that approves passive victimization, but of the great strength and rich poverty required to pick up the cross and follow him who emptied himself, who did not consider power the most essential tool in communicating the truth.

Naperville from Maundy Thursday to the first Wednesday of Eastertide was not an easy place. I did not run there by the strength of my heart's own two legs. My heart toward my own home is Jonah's toward the outsider. O, LORD, I do not want to know my poverty.

ἀγαπᾷς με πλέον τούτων;
ἀγαπᾷς με;
φιλεῖς με;

Follow Me.