The Dance

Jesus is your perfect partner,
the steps you struggle with to follow together is your prayer.

He is the best dancer, able to dance any step in harmony with any song.
The song of the dance is always love, His love for you, and your response.

It can be a sad, slow song with an earnest and heartfelt melody
when we are lonely or hurt by our sins or the sins of others.
It can be a fast and joyous waltz when our hearts are gay and happy.
It can be a steady and methodical song full of passion and drama
when our hearts are in great need of grace for another or for ourselves.

The song is loving, slow and romantic, our hearts are in love.

Prayer is a dance with Jesus.

At the beginning of our prayer, we struggle to sync our dance steps with the music.
We fall all over ourselves and our partner.
Our steps must be memorized and directed by our firm and strict intention,
and attention in our minds.

We get distracted and  stumble and the dance is awkward and we find it harder
to find a proper place for the steps to match the melody.
But as we learn the steps our struggles to concentrate on dancing are rewarded.

We move more smoothly, it becomes effortless… without thought,
only the will to dance and move together in love.

We do not know how to dance as we ought, says St. Paul,
the Holy Spirit comes to our aid and helps us to move with the music as Jesus would direct.

The best dancers are those who through much practice are able
to make their movements together an expression of their hearts.

Listen to the words of Christ to St. Elizabeth of the Trinity and to each one of us:

“give me your heart that in you and through you, in a life of union,
I may love, or, rather we may love the Father ardently.
Give me your mind, your eyes, your hands, your whole being.
I wish, in you and by you, to live as it were a second life wholly of love,
which will be a continuation and a complement to My earthly life…”

Amen.