Less Of Me, More Of Christ

 The coach of the Oakland Raiders said to me one day, “What are you teaching in Catholic colleges?  I have players come to me saying, I've got to do my thing. How are we going to have a football team if everybody does his thing?  I thought Christian charity meant doing the other person's thing.'  And so we become wild and confused and full of psychoses and neuroses as soon as the I begins to get in the way. 

 I don't want my life to be mine, I want to be His. The more ego there is, the less there is of Christ.  If the box is full of salt, you cannot fill it with pepper.  And if we're filled with the search for identity, we are not identical with Christ.  The more we are Christ, the more he can use us.  And he does not use us, he does not open doors and give us opportunities, until we are flexible in his hands, obedient like a pencil. If I want this pencil to write God, it writes God.  But let this pencil be endowed with its own will, when I want to write the word God, it writes the word dog.  I can't do anything with it.  So the effectiveness of our apostolate depends to a great extent upon denial of self and the search to be one with Christ in knowledge and in will.  Then after a while we reach a point where nothing in all the world is worth a moment of time except to know more of him.