The first advice for this week is to get started with the simplest of responses.  Just say "yes."  Practice saying it out loud.  What does it feel like to say it different ways?  With different degrees of conviction?

The next exercise might be to be more specific about the "yes."  I can say "yes" and mean that I will accompany Jesus, in the Mission he has from God, by being faithful to whatever comes my way today.

I may sense that there is a special kind of fidelity that is wrapped up in the invitation of Jesus to me.  So, I might make my "yes" even more explicit:  "Yes, I will be with you in the costly fidelity of loving my spouse."  (Or, loving my children, or accepting the difficult challenges of my job, or of forgiving that relative or neighbor, or by acting against that bad self-defeating habit I have.)

I may feel the invitation reaching to the areas where I have heard the call, but have not responded.  I might make my "yes" more open-ended.  "Yes, I want to be with you in the ways you are loving, and will open my heart more completely to the needs of others, especially the poor."  (Or, to make time to get more involved, or to respond to that invitation to service at my church, or write that letter to my political representative.)

There may be such a desire growing in my heart, to respond in growing love to the love of Jesus, that I may want to express my "yes" more affectively.  I may want to try words and expressions that are personal and loving and full of tenderness, from deep inside.  I could try to express my desire to be so close to Jesus that I want to experience the same vulnerabilities he experienced and experiences today.  As lovers do, I may want to place my heart with his.  I can practice saying out loud, or writing out, my growing desire to know and enter into the same struggles and poverty and surrender that fills the heart of the One I love.  Then, my "yes," and my desire for intimate togetherness, come together.

In the weeks ahead, we will take up our desire to grow in knowledge of, intimacy with and togetherness in service with Jesus.  This week, we have the luxury of letting our consciousness be on all the ways we can say the "yes" of grateful love. 

As we do each week, let it be part of the background from the moment I awake, through all the in between times, to the time I prepare to sleep.  I can practice taking a slow, deep breath as I go from one thing to another, as I answer the phone, as I get in the car, whatever I'm doing.  That deep breath can be a slow, deep "yes."  Practice letting "response" fill the background of my everyday life and experience the power that growing in this relationship of love can have.