There are times when all you can do is cry out in pain to the Lord.  No task can help the feeling of uselessness, no medicine can lift the pain out of the bones, sleep is a battleground, and wakefulness is pain.  I am in waiting, and I don't know what I'm waiting for. 

Once I read a description of this life as a person at a train station, there is grass growing between the tracks with no sign that a train has been through recently, or that one is even expected...the person knows somehow that the only thing to do is wait.

I wait for the emptiness to fade, for it is an illusion.  I wait for the pain to lift, for it is a distraction.  The dreams!  Oh God, the dreams, they are of you, but you are always going behind a gate where I cannot pass.  You come to me and comfort me, and see my way and give me love, then go behind the gate where I cannot go.

Does this have any meaning?  Or is it just Saturday night and I'm waiting for the challenge of walking, sitting, and standing during Mass?

Worldly Stresses, Pain, and The Love of Christ

It has been an active time for the past two weeks.  My life was hit with a storm of worldly concerns that had to be taken care of, because they dealt with the house in which I live.  In the middle of all that I began to have some very serious pain that made already limited mobility that much worse.

No, I'm not going to take up time complaining, I want instead to talk about a verse from Philippians that brought me up short.  Many of you know that I prefer to do Lectio from the Good News Bible (Today's English Version) in the first paragraph will explain what the version is, and why it is so good for private study.  It is Philippians 1:21a that caught my heart and has not yet let go.

For what is life? To me it is Christ...

 
What can be said about that except I want my life to be Christ!  To transform my life into an, admittedly imperfect, image of Christ.  To life as fully as I can in Christ, even with pain, distraction, temptations, sins, all of it!  This is no easy task, but it is consuming me from within.  I cannot escape this simple difference in translation: what is life? Life is Christ!

So each evening I spend at least an hour in my chapel letting this simple set of words settle as deep into my soul as possible.  One thing is certain, without that burning hope, my life would be a waste.  Hope is the essential element of faith.  

How can I make people see this beauty?  Is it possible?  Preaching doesn't seem to do much in creating faith, what else is there?  I can only hope that my life in solitude, or at least as much as I can manage -- after all, the heart is our best hermitage -- can be enough witness that at least one soul will catch fire.

May God bring us altogether to everlasting life. 

Lack of Intimacy / Time Alone

The most important event of my week has been facing the reality of how my life utterly lacks intimacy.  One would think that a person seeking a life of solitude and prayer would not need intimacy, but you would be wrong.  I don't need a significant other, or a lover, because when I seriously think about it it becomes painfully obvious to me that no human can ever bring me the intimacy I need, that I am looking for.

I have a limited number of friends whom I talk with, mainly on Facebook, and one on the phone, other than that, it's just me.  Even as I pine for something more with someone else, I know that nothing else is going to work, and that even if I had the "perfect" someone, it would never be what I have given up everything to find.  Twice I've determined to just stop, to quit and face I was not cut out for this life, yet, a powerful realization hit me...what would I do?  Go back to my previous style of life?  Reapply all those layers of false self that so much pain removed?  

No, that is not an option.  There is no going back.  I am alone now, and until God opens intimacy to me, then I will be as I am, waiting.  "They serve too, who sit and wait."

Adoration and Healing

Yesterday I spent three hours in adoration of the Sacrament during the Forty Hours at the monastery.  

Today I received anointing for several people in my life.  It was a lovely event at Nazareth, with the nuns whom I've been celebrating daily Mass for two years, or more, I can't remember.

Both of these events together have impacted me in a very deep way.

During the adoration I kept trying to pray and found that no matter what I did, it simply wasn't happening.  Yes, Christ was present in that special way in the Eucharistic Host, but I couldn't get a decent prayer out of my heart!  That is very unusual for me, as I love to go to the Adorations.  At the end of the third hour I said in my heart, "I will not leave unless you speak to me."

You have everything you need.  Your sins are nothing to me.  Persevere and endure.

After that I left and came home.

Today I prayed before Mass began for all the people for whom I was going to be anointed.  Then came the anointing.  I sat down and just...was...that's all...was.  I started to try to pray and no thoughts could form.  No mind.  Only being.  It is the closest I have ever come to understanding St. John of the Cross' statement, All my sense were suspended.  Only when the intercessions began did I come back to myself, and control of my mind.

What happened?  I do not know.  Only God can help me understand.

Corpus Christi

Today is the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ. This is a uniquely Catholic feast, and predates the reformation by a few hundred years. St. Juliana of Mount Cornillon, d. 1258, was the first to start praying for this feast to come about due to her devotion to the Holy Sacrament.  The Council of Vienne (1311) ordered the feast to be celebrated, but it took a while for everyone to get on board.

St. Thomas Aquinas was instrumental in the composition of the Office, and promoting its adoption.  For me, the feast points to two things:  the reality of the incarnation, and the reality of Christ in the Eucharistic elements.  Tomorrow I will spend the greater portion of the day at the monastery, sitting before the Sacrament in the chapel, because I simply can't wait to spend that time with Christ in the form that I can see!

Yes, Christ is always with us, but is Christ always visible to us?  When the Sacrament is positioned on the altar, Christ is visible to us, and as real as any of us sitting in that chapel.  With the gradual removal of myself from public life, the time spent with Christ is ever more precious.  I look forward to the day when I may keep the Sacrament in my home chapel.  

The last thing today is to share with you the last verse of the responsory of Office of Readings.

Drink this sacred blood, the price he paid for you,
so that you may never lose heart because of your sinfulness.

The Blessings

It is too easy to concentrate on the negative and painful aspects of life without giving at least a word or two about the blessings.  We work hard to understand our sufferings, to offer them up, to give meaning to that which is sometimes meaningless -- but we spend very little energy on the positive, glorious, blessings of creation and life itself.

Over at Stumbling Along the Spiritual Path, Michael's been listing Awesome Things pretty often; speaking of movies, and long holiday weekends.  I would add the simple joy of watching the clouds pass by in the sky, or the farmer behind my house mowing the pasture, a garden tour where beauty is hidden behind other peoples homes that they open to us to view.  Then, the glory of night, when ancient lights shine in the sky, their star perhaps long dead, the light traveling for millions of years; the rising moon that is still in the high sky when I say the Office of Readings.  There is the bird outside the window of my chapel who only starts to sing when I begin singing the invitatory. 

Have you noticed the wonders of technology, without concentrating on the threats?  How about the blessedness of holding a baby in your arm, close to your face, and feeling the life inside trusting you?  What about the swell of love and pain when your niece or nephew or grandchild is ill, and you sit with them, suffering with them, and realize what an honor it is to be so mixed in their life?  Or, those moments of silence while sitting with a friend of your heart, wordless for the need of words is contentedly silent?

Ponder on life and joy, remember O my soul, that all comes from God.

Out of the Hermitage Too Much

During that past two days I have had to be out of the house too much.  Today the car had to go to Louisville for repairs, and that meant being out of the house for the entire day, being around all that strange energy, and now I feel like someone who has bitten an electric wire.  Raven's Bread is a bi-monthly newsletter for hermits, and once they asked for input from their readers about "how do you handle being away from your hermitage for long periods of time?"  Almost every response was "I do everything possible to not be away for more than two hours a day, and avoid ever having to spend the night somewhere else."

Well, I can honestly say that I am beginning to understand that to be the truth.  I've been home for hours now and the jittery feeling has still not totally left me.  Perhaps an hour before the icons with the Lord will help.  And, yes, I know I do not have to be before the icons to be with God, but they help me delineate a sacred space in a spare bedroom slowly being turned into a chapel.  When I am in there with my eight day candles burning, the icons glistening, my breathing begins to take on a deeper rhythm, regular and seducing me into total silence.

At this time I must confess I do not know how people live without the silence I am able to keep.  I once lived in a noisy, busy world, and now it is a miracle in my eyes that the result was not nervous collapse.  To all of you who do live in the world, I salute your stamina. 

Please write with prayer requests.  You may make them as a comment and if you want, I will keep them private.  My purpose is to pray.

How to Keep Faith

If you have faith now, do not let the abuse of children by priests ruin your faith. 
Did God do it?  No. 
Did priests with serious problems do it?  Yes. 
Were they protected and moved around by the hierarchy we were supposed to trust?  Yes. 
Again, did God to it?  No.

It is hard for the average Catholic to separate their faith from the actions of the priests, bishops, and the pope.  If your faith is challenged by this issue, then you must, absolutely must, ask yourself, "is my faith in God, or in the Church as an institution?"  Ask that of yourself, and see whether or not your faith for all these years has rested in the institution and not in God.  That is a challenging question, because people will say my faith was in both, but is that the right answer?  You have faith in God, and trust in the church, not the other way around.  I am reminded of people who still pine for the old Latin church, because their faith is in that and not in God.

Did God abuse children?  No.
Did Servants of the Church abuse and cover it up?  Yes.

We must be clear in where our anger should be directed.  Think of the children over time who did tell, and were beaten by their parents for suggesting such a thing.  Why would they do that?  Simple, their faith was in the church, and not ultimately in God.

A new missal is about to come out, it may be inferior, but since no one has seen every page of it, we don't know, yet is it important enough to get riled up about when the scandal of abuse is over our heads?  No.

Did God ever write a liturgy?  No.

Put your faith into proper perspective.