“For there is nothing hidden except to be disclosed; nor is anything secret except to come to light.” There have been times in my life when these words terrified me and times in my life when I embraced them with hope.
Often my prayer feels like an exercise in rigorous honesty. I simply sit and try to be as honest as I can about my thoughts and feelings. When I can go no further, I ask for the grace to be more honest, and I often have to ask for the desire to be honest. The great thing about rigorous honesty is that it leaves me impoverished, no pretenses to defend, but confident in God’s undergirding and overwhelming mercy and love. And it’s here, I think, that I’m most ready to receive what God has to share.
May I practice rigorous honesty today, confident that God takes great joy in this attempt to share myself, just as I take joy in a loved one’s sharing with me.
—Ryen Dwyer, S.J., a Chicago-Detroit province Jesuit scholastic, is currently studying philosophy at Loyola University Chicago.