Bless the Lord, my soul!
Lord God, how great you are,
clothed in majesty and glory,
wrapped in light as in a robe!You stretch out the heavens like a tent.
Above the rains you build your dwelling.
You make the clouds your chariot,
and walk on the wings of the wind;
you make the winds your messengers
and flashing fire your servants.Psalm 104
A new blog I’m beginning: Heart Arrows: little prayers that pierce the Heart of God Hope you can join me there from time to time.
“When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something’s suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful.” — Billie Mobayed
To me, that sounds like a pretty good deal–but, our God, in His incredible love, not only fills the cracks in our lives with gold, but transforms our very lives into a vessel of pure gold. Amazing love.
“Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. . .”
The day before yesterday was the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle. In the Office of Readings, St. Gregory the Great makes the following point: “Do you really believe that it was by chance that this chosen disciple was absent, then came and heard, heard and doubted, doubted and touched, touched and believed? It was not by chance but in God’s providence. In a marvelous way God’s mercy arranged that the disbelieving disciple, in touching the wounds of his master’s body, should heal our wounds of disbelief. The disbelief of Thomas has done more for our faith than the faith of the other disciples.”
Try to remember this the next time you are dismayed by your own failings. God, in His providence, can use them to hearten others as they see His work in your life. Struggle through to touch and believe.
Storms. God’s own fireworks.
He made the darkness his covering,
the dark waters of the clouds, his tent.
A brightness shone out before him
with hailstones and flashes of fire.
The Lord thundered in the heavens;
the Most High let his voice be heard.
He shot his arrows, scattered the foe,
flashed his lightnings, and put them to flight.
Beautiful words from Psalm 18, one of the psalms from Morning Prayer this morning. But even more marvelous are the verses that follow:
From on high he reached down and seized me;
he drew me forth from the mighty waters.
He snatched me from my powerful foe,
from my enemies whose strength I could not match.
They assailed me in the day of my misfortune,
but the Lord was my support.
He brought me forth into freedom,
he saved me because he loved me.
In the midst of your storm, God is coming to you. He is coming to you to save you. Because He loves you. Be not afraid of the storm.
I don’t put my trust in the weather; I put my trust in God. All times are in His hands. We have had weeks of dryness, but even these speak to us of Him. This morning in Morning Prayer, we prayed these lines from Psalm 63: “My body pines for you like a dry, weary land without water.” May that be true of us; may we pine for Him, long for Him, like a dry, weary land without water.
Yet I took heart as we prayed the Canticle from Daniel this morning: “Cold and chill, bless the Lord. Dew and rain, bless the Lord.” All times are in His hands.
The Gospel reading for today tells the story of Christ healing the woman who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years. Many people were bumping up against Him, but she alone reached out to Him in faith. Dr. Mary Healy challenges each of us: “The afflicted woman in this episode is a model for approaching Jesus. While crowd of people were bumping into him as he walked along, she touched him. Her faith brought her into living contact with Jesus, and as a result she experienced a dramatic healing. The difference between the crowds and the woman prompts the question: How often do we merely bump against Jesus—for instance, when we receive Him in the Eucharist?”
“O Queen of Martyrs, sea of sorrows, do not forsake me when, beneath the burden of suffering, I feel my strength and virtue weakening.” (Bl. Barbolo Longo)
One of my favorite screensavers is a collection of photos from outer space taken by the Hubble Telescope. What is out there, that we can’t see with our naked eye, is utterly beautiful. Besides those I’ve posted here, there are countless others at their website. Now let me tell you the reason I really like looking at these photos: because each one is a reminder of what God can see and I can’t. What that reminds me of is that there is so much going on in my soul, so much that the Spirit of God is doing deep in my soul, that is of great beauty, even though I can’t see it. Think about that, will you? And your soul (and mine) is infinitely more beautiful than any of these pictures . . .
I sat completely alone on the earth.
Completely alone.
I saw myself sitting on that great globe.
Then it began. The constantly recurring
dreadful anguish.
The globe began to spin with raging speed.
The trees cracked. The mountains collapsed.
The ocean washed up out of the deep.
The wind howled in my ears: Let go! Let go! Let go!
I did not let go. I clung to the earth
with mouth and hands and feet.
For I was afraid. What will become of me
in this void, in this empty night?
Never, never . . .
Until I awoke. Wet from perspiration and anguish.
Now I am thirty-nine years old. I have let it go. It was about six years ago. It happened, not in a dream, but during the day, in the midst of reality, and I felt: now I am finished, now anything can happen. Sorrow or joy, or anything! I loosened my grasp. I surrendered myself to God’s will in something that became increasingly clearer, something that was a matter of life and death. I was dragged along into emptiness. I lost my bearings and my foothold. Such an experience can drive one insane. One could take one’s own life. Everything becomes foreign to you. You really feel you have lost your grip. Lost. You must be saved, born anew out of blood and darkness.
And when it has come to this point, everything becomes new, even a flower, a butterfly, or the billowing of the wind in the reeds.
But most of all Him.
It is truly a matter of all or nothing. It is heaven or hell for a person. One becomes a person or an inhuman creature. You stand before the grace-filled choice, particularly after the Incarnation of the Son. Once! One realizes later that life was pointing toward this all along, as the Old Covenant toward the New, as the night toward the day, as losing life toward gaining it.
I write this for those who know it, so that they may rejoice with me in the Lord, and for those who are confronted with it, so that they will not turn back, for the Lord is also shepherd in the night. He leads you through the dark valleys, and your heart can only come to the place for which it longs through dark valleys.
A hurricane of love is raging over the earth, with his tugging, luring, shouting: Let go, give in, in God’s name give in, all of you together.
~Flor Hofmans (1925-1964), Flemish priest, professor in theology in Santiago de Chile (quoted in Wilfrid Stinissen, Into Your Hands, Father)
Witnesses to Hope 
