If someone were to ask you, what’s your identity, what would you say? Or if they asked you, what’s your mission in life, what would you say?
I was blessed to go to the Holy Land in seminary. We visited Mt. Tabor, and were told we’d get to climb up it. But we ran out of time and rode the bus up the mountain instead. I was really disappointed! I wanted to climb up the mountain the way that Jesus, Peter, James, and John had! While we were up there, a thick fog, like a big CLOUD, came over the top of the mountain, and we couldn’t see anything for a few minutes! It was like pea soup! I thought, wow, this is what it was like when the cloud came over the disciples! I sensed that God was saying to me, “I am here, and I see you!”
In our Lenten series, we are watching video reflections by Fr. Columba on the Sunday readings, and discussing them in small groups. It’s been really wonderful to see so many people participate, who love the Lord and are hungry to discuss their faith! As
This past Friday evening, in the last video, Fr. Columba led us through an imagination exercise, imagining ourselves on the mountain with Peter, James, John, and Jesus. He had us imagine hearing the Father say, not “This is my beloved son”, but to personally say to each one of us, “You are my beloved. You are my child. I am so well pleased in you…” That night, our heavenly Father truly spoke these words to each one of us through the gift of imagination He gave us!
Then we discussed the question, “When we hear the words, “You are my beloved,” how does that feel? Do you find yourself struggling to believe those words?” Some of us struggled. Some of us felt unworthy to hear those words. But in the end, no matter how we feel about those words, they are true. They are reality. Our heavenly Father loves us and delights in us, whether we feel it… or sense it… or believe it! It’s true.
If someone were to ask you, what’s your identity, what would you say? Or what’s your mission in life? To discover our identity and our mission, we must “come to know and believe in the love God has for us”. Without knowing and believing in God’s love for us, without this relationship with God, we won’t know our identity OR our mission in life.
Relationship, Identity, and Mission, or RIM for short, is true spirituality, is our foundation, is what it means to be a disciple. It is based in Jesus’ words, “Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me.”
R: Relationship: we’re made for a daily life-giving relationship with the Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! We’re made for union with Jesus. St. Paul says, “we have come to know and believe in the love God has for us.” That’s why we do penance in Lent: to deepen our relationship with God.
I: Identity: comes from our relationship to the Trinity; our deepest, core identity is a beloved son or beloved daughter of God! It’s not brother, or parent, or student, or athlete, or electrician, or owner of stuff, or traveler, or anything else. Our core identity is beloved son or beloved daughter of God. We can never lose that. It is forever.
M: Mission: my mission in life flows from that identity! To love and serve God in my neighbor. To clothe the naked, feed the hungry, help Jesus in his distressing disguise. To invite others to become children of God, to become citizens of the kingdom of God. To “seek first the kingdom of God”. Ultimately, Jesus’ mission is our mission. We participate in his mission of saving souls through offered prayers, offered sufferings, offered works of mercy.
Sometimes we get this order reversed. We might put mission first instead of relationship. We might burn both ends of the candle on mission, serving others, and not have time for daily intimacy with the Lord Jesus. Once someone told me he skipped Mass because he wanted to help do a chore for his neighbor. This is getting the order reversed.
If we are too busy to pray, we are too busy. If we don’t make our prayer time our number one priority in life, to nurture our relationship, then we won’t know our identity, and we won’t know our mission. We will be lost. B.U.S.Y. stands for “Burdened Under Satan’s Yoke”.
St. John of the Cross writes, “Those who are very active and think that they are going to encircle the earth with their preaching (work and busyness) . . . should realize that they would do the Church much more good, and please God much more . . . if they spent even half of this time being with God in prayer. In this way they would certainly achieve more, with less trouble, in one work than they would have done in a thousand: their prayer would merit it and would give them inner strength.”
Jesus prioritized His R, His Relationship with His Father. He spent 30 years nurturing that relationship. Then he was baptized and the Father reaffirmed His I, His identity: “This is my beloved Son”. Next, Jesus began his M, His Mission, His public ministry. At the transfiguration, the Father reaffirmed Jesus’s identity again with the words, “This is my beloved Son”, just before He completed His mission by dying, rising, ascending, and sending the Spirit. Like Jesus, we need to hear those words over and over again, every day in fact.
This Lent, reflect on R.I.M.: Relationship with God first; from that relationship we discover our Identity, and from that Identity we know our Mission! The lives of all the saints show us how to live the right order. As the saints made their R, relationship with the Trinity, their priority, God formed their I, their identity as a beloved son or daughter, and this identity gave them their M, their mission, to lead others to become children of God!