Interior freedom and the present moment
I have been impressed with the tacit emphasis on mindfulness in the writing of Jacques Philippe. Like so many Christian writers he uses terms more in keeping with our tradition but an emphasis on being aware of the present moment with a certain quality of apprehension is present. Below is a wise statement on how interior freedom is linked to living in the present moment.
“One of the essential conditions of interior freedom is the ability to live in the present moment. For one thing, it is only then that we can exercise freedom. We have no hold on the past—we can’t change the smallest bit of it. People sometimes try to relive past events considered failures (“I should have done this … should have said that … ”) but those imaginary scenarios are merely dreams: it is not possible to backtrack. The only free act we can make in regard to the past is to accept it just as it was and leave it trustingly in God’s hands.
We have very little hold on the future either. Despite all our foresight, plans, and promises, it takes very little to change everything completely. We can’t program life in advance, but can only receive it moment by moment.
All we have is the present moment. Here is the only place where we can make free acts. Only in the present moment are we truly in contact with reality.
Someone might think it tragic that the present is so fleeting and neither the past nor the future really belongs to us. But, approached from the standpoint of Christian faith and hope, the present moment is rich in grace and holds immense reassurance.
This is where God is present. “I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matthew 28:20). God is the eternal present. Every moment, whatever it brings, is filled with God’s presence, rich with the possibility of communion with God. We do not commune with God in the past or the future, but by welcoming each instant as the place where he gives himself to us.”
