We Are Creatures
The recognition of our earthly nature leads us to affirm that our fundamental relationship with God is one of dependence. We are not the source of our own being: our race exists only because we receive life from another. However great the divine condenscension, we are never on a par with God. Truth in prayer, worship, and service of God is characterized by the realization that all that we have comes from God; we have nothing to contribute to the relationship but our needs. Our deepest spiritual experience is to feel utterly dependent on God and to want to submit ourselves to the divine will. The mystics talk about a point at which the soul becomes absorbed in God and seems no longer to have an automomous existence. God creates. God sustains us in being. Like children who buy Christmas gifts for their parents with money received from them, we can give nothing to God that has not first been God's gift...
The truth is that our being is incomplete without God. To seek God is, therefore, a fundamental tendamental tendency of our nature. "You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." We cannot attain human fulfillment except in relationship with God. There is a space in us that can be filled by only God. There is a certain spiritual potentiality that never comes alive if we are locked in a world of self-sufficiency. "Look to God that you may become radiant" (Ps. 34:5).
from A Guide to Living in the Truth: Saint Benedict's Teaching on Humility
by Michael Casey
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