I read this the other day and loved it. It comes from a favorite book of mine: Testimony of Hope by Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan. It is a quote from the Great Patriarch Athenagoras:
We need to succeed in disarming ourselves.
I have fought this war. For years and years.
It was terrible. But now I’ve disarmed.
I am no longer afraid of anything,
because “love drives out fear.”
I am disarmed of the will to overcome,
to justify myself at the expense of others.
I am no longer on the alert,
jealously grasping my riches.
I welcome and I share.
I am not attached to my opinions, to my plans.
If other better proposals come to me,
I accept them willingly.
Or rather, not better, but good.
You know, I have given up comparisons. . . .
That which is good, true, real, wherever it is,
it is the best for me.
Therefore, I am no longer afraid.
When you no longer possess anything,
you no longer have fear.
“Who can separate us from the love of Christ?”
But if we disarm ourselves,
if we divest ourselves,
if we open ourselves to the God-man
who makes all things new,
then it is he who cancels our evil past
and gives back to us a new time
where everything is possible.
