Into Another Intensity

Diminishment and Retirement

FAIRACRES PUBLICATIONS 119

In the prime of life we may see ourselves as creative people, with a mission and much to offer in God's service. But how are we to react when the ordinary course of circumstances brings us up against limitation and frustration? How are we to respond in God's service to the necessities of retirement, ageing, illness and, ultimately, death? Teilhard de Chardin's great phrase 'the divinization of our passivities' reminds us that in those things which we cannot help we are especially in God's hands. These two essays draw out the challenge of experiencing diminishment in the framework of faith, and so coming to know its creative potential. In two personal testimonies, with no sentimental evasion of the hard facts, the authors bear witness, from different viewpoints, that our 'lessness', willingly accepted, can bring us to renewal of life where 'in the depths there is Resurrection'.