Letter from America

This photo blog is about many different things. On one level, at the moment, it is about my preparations to take first vows in the Society of Jesus. At a deeper level, though, it is about finding God in people, places and pictures.

Today, I expected to write about a letter – the one I have written to the Society asking to join. But if this blog is really about where I find God in my day, then it has to be about another letter – one I received from a dear friend, Jennifer, in the USA.

It is a letter about vows this weekend, but more than that, it is a letter about friendship and the ways we become interwoven with the people we love most.

Each morning I use the wonderful prayer podcast www.biddenonderweg.org to help me reflect on a different scripture passage (there is an English version at www.pray-as-you-go.org). Today, one of the questions was: how much do I share with others the things that touch me most?

And if I think about my friendship with Jennifer, and the other most important relationships in my life, they are built on shared interests, shared experiences, on laughter and mishaps and even sometimes tears. But most of all they are built on sharing the things that touch us the most. It is by opening our hearts to each other that we truly get to know each other.

One of the great prayers of St Ignatius is for us to have a deep, interior knowledge of Christ, not for its own sake, but for a very clear purpose: the more we know Christ, the more we love Christ. And from that love can come quite life changing experiences.

I have no doubt that the same applies to the relationships we seek with each other – the more we come to know each other at the deepest level, the more we grow to love each other. Jennifer’s letter brought a tear of joy to my eye this morning. And that was the perfect gift for this week, or any week, reminding me what love and friendship truly means.