Journey Toward Christ
For me this journey toward Christ started by a long and windy road to understand how to see Christ with new eyes.
Wounding ways and simplistic views, grounded in sorting habits and judgmental world views, often encountered at the doorstep of many churches deterred me from doing just this. Mt. Irenaeus offered a welcoming and healing haven and was instrumental in helping me to find Christ anew and renewed, as well as embrace a community of like-minded un-kosher Catholics.
The Mountain community welcomed, listened, never judged, and believed in gathering around a table with excellent food and hospitality. This appealed to my hybridized European identity, as well as provided me with a link to history and mystical ancient paths. The Mountain friars opened the door to depth, fearless of treading through murky spots alongside the seeker, allowing for transformation in Christ in simplicity and authenticity.
Seeing Christ with new eyes is just a first step, then comes opening up and pulling away from rutted preconceptions forged from unhappy stories or past resentments too long clung to. Christ within flows deeply through heart and gut releasing sacred longings. Christ’s Grace liberates our souls from behind the cobwebs torn asunder, Christ swabs our window panes to release the light that must bathe us and which in turn we must give to all… Christ helps us to stand on our head and elevate the heart above
the thinking mind. Christ shoves away usual ways of being, Christ forges a third way from the habitual unimaginative dualistic mind through love and joy.
Christ is and always shall be – Praise be.
— By Anne-Claire Fisher, Secular Franciscan