25 February 2026

In his brilliant ‘Markings’, Dag Hammarskjold, the former Secretary General of the United Nations, killed in an aeroplane crash in 1961, reveals the contours of his own spiritual journey. He memorably says, ‘The longest journey is the journey inward.’

The journey begins by unmasking our humanity, peeling back the layers which conceal our poverty of spirit, our lack of generosity, our bitterness, jealousy, greed.

Through this painful process, need is exposed and pity aroused within us. As the journey continues to get longer, even more is demanded of the traveller. There is the emptying of self. ‘Not I, God in me.’ is a favourite quotation.

Life, as in him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, can only be discovered by those who empty themselves in order to be filled with the Spirit of God.  The courage is to embrace humility rather than fulfilling personal desires. It is a life’s work.

‘You will know life,’ he writes, ‘and be acknowledged by it according to your degree of transparency, your capacity, that is, to vanish as an end, and remain purely a means.’

The call to vanish as an end and remain purely a means is the vocation of the Church and everyone who belongs to it. We must resist the temptation to be something significant, something important, something influential. Most of all, we must let God be.

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