Where is Christ today?

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

This is the day when everything is silent.  We can go about the day not giving much of a thought to it–just seeing it as the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Yet monumental things were happening in the spiritual realm.  Christ descended to hell to set captives free.

This still has meaning for us.  So often we think nothing is happening in our own spiritual lives, yet God is about monumental things.  Have hope in the Unseen.

Christ descended into “Hell” and is therefore close to those cast into it, transforming their darkness into light.  Suffering and torment is still terrible and well-nigh unbearable.  Yet the star of hope has risen–the anchor of the heart reaches the very throne of God.  Instead of evil becoming unleashed within man, the light shines victorious: suffering–without ceasing to be suffering–becomes, despite everything, a hymn of praise. (Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi)

And for those of you who feel that you are living “in darkness and in the shadow of death”, take heart, for you are exactly who he desires to visit.  From an ancient homily on Holy Saturday:

Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives . . .

“Perhaps his sorrow is splendor”

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

From a profound book, Lament for a Son, written by Nicholas Wolterstorff on the death of his 25-year-old son from a mountaineering accident:

It is said of God that no one can behold his face and live.  I always thought this meant that no one could see his splendor and live.  A friend said perhaps it meant that no one could see his sorrow and live.  or perhaps his sorrow is splendor.

And great mystery: to redeem our brokenness and lovelessness the God who suffers with us did not strike some mighty blow of power but sent his beloved son to suffer like us, through his suffering to redeem us from suffering and evil.

Instead of explaining our suffering, God shares it.

Hidden love

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Remembering and thanking God this day for all the priests we know and love.  May the Cure d’Ars bestow his blessing on them all today, and may Christ draw them ever deeper into His pierced Heart.

It is easy for any child to pick out the faults in the sermon on his way home from Church every Sunday.  It is impossible for him to find out the hidden love that makes a man, in spite of his intellectual limitations, his neuroticism, his own lack of strength, give up his life to the service of God’s people, however bumblingly he may go about it . . .  (Flannery O’Connor, Spiritual Writings)

May God forgive us for all the times we do not see with His own eyes, and may we continually pray for our priests.

One missed kiss

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Not only would there be one less kiss (see yesterday’s post), but it would be missed as well.  The Lord of Love needs your love.  He said to Simon the Pharisee, “You gave me no kiss . . . ” (Lk 7.45).  Amy Carmichael writes: “To love that could miss so small a sign of love as water, and a kiss, is not love the dearest offering?”  The Bridegroom says in the Song of Songs: “Let me see your face.  Let me hear your voice.”    I don’t remember where I read the following:

. . . on Good Friday she [Sr. Maria Pierina at the age of 12] heard a voice saying quite distinctly: “Nobody gives me a kiss of love in My Face to make amends for the kiss of Judas.” In her childlike simplicity, she believed that the voice was heard by all and was pained to see that only the wounds were kissed but not the face.  In her heart exclaiming, “Have patience, dear Jesus, I will give you a kiss oflove,” she imprinted a kiss on the Face with full ardour.

During these high holy days, don’t miss those small chances to offer Him a kiss.  It takes just the simplest lifting of your heart and face to His.

One less kiss

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments
You did not give me a kiss

Following up on yesterday’s gospel which is one of my very favorite readings:  I did a study once on all the New Testament scriptures that talk about women at the feet of Jesus.  I usually meditate on various of them this time of year because most of them occurred near and at the time of the Lord’s Passion (like yesterday’s reading).  Luke 7 recounts a story similar to yesterday’s Gospel, but in a different context, and in it, it is said that the woman “covered his feet with kisses” (Lk 7:38).  Jesus himself remarks on this to Simon (at whose house he was) and actually upbraids him for not welcoming Him in the same fashion. “You did not give me a kiss . . . ”  Let not the same be said of us.  Let us then not hold back our kisses for His sacred feet.  Mother Teresa once said something to the effect that if we don’t put our drop in the ocean, the ocean is one drop less.  The same can be said for kissing the feet of Jesus: if we don’t give Him our kiss, He has received one less kiss . . . and it will be missed by Him.  And note . . . for those of you who hold back because of your faults and failings . . . it was the kiss of a sinful woman that He valued.

One’s little pot of oinment

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Today’s Gospel as we begin Holy Week is the story of Mary of Bethany anointing Jesus’ feet.  A meditation from Amy Carmichael to ponder when we think we have broken our “little pot of ointment” in vain.

Things to remember quietly when one’s little pot of ointment seems to have been broken in vain.  Of Thine own have we given Thee, for love is of God.  The love, then, was His, and to Him first of all it was offered–to the human dear one not first but second.  No pot of ointment was ever broken at His feet wihtout given Him some little quick sense of pleasure. So it was not all in vain.  Then if it seemed to miss what we meant it to do for the one we love down here, it may be only for the moment.  The remembrance may return and be very sweet, like a fragrance.

The more loving the heart is, the more it looks forward to giving a pleasure to the one it loves, the keener therefore the pang of disappointment when it fails, and the fiercer the inrush of depression.  The heart is grieved and cannot rise to be glad.  At such times it does help to know that love cannot be as water spilt on the ground.  For it is of God.  The fragrance of the ointment will yet fill the house.  The one to whom we wanted to bring comfort will in the end find that which we brought.  But the sweet and immediate comfort is-–‘Of Thine own have we given Thee.’  Dear Lord, did it comfort Thee?

How to receive the One who comes in the name of the Lord

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It’s hard to find a lovelier description of our response to this day that that in today’s Office of Readings:

Let us run to accompany him as he hastens toward his passion, and imitate those who met him then, not by covering his path with garments, olive branches or palms, but by doing all we can to prostrate ourselves before him by being humble and by trying to live as he would wish.  Then we shall be able to receive the Word at his coming, and God whom no limits can contain, will be within us.  (St. Andrew of Crete)

True adoration

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One of my main purposes in writing this blog is to try to enkindle hope in others.  And, as I say in the sidebar, I’m usually writing for myself!  The last couple of days I have been going back through my journal, re-reading the many quotes I have collected therein, for the purpose of lifting my heart.  I treasure this one from Pope Benedict.  It has redefined for me the meaning of spending an hour in adoration:

Why do we not truly lay our life before Him, including our incapability to believe and to pray?  This is already an act of worship: when we truly say, “Kyrie eleison,” when we truly cry out to God from the depth of our wickedness, this is acknowledgment of what we are, and who He is; it shte adoration of His glory.  (translated from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Dogma and Verkundigung, p. 123f.)

God asks us only for what we can give Him?  And much of the time it is just our emptiness and incapabilities, but that is “already an act of worship.”

A golden moment

Sr. Dorcee, beloved6 Comments

There are so many artistic depictions of the Annunciation, but one of my all-time favorites is one that a good friend of mine gave me a few years ago.  You can see it below.  Not too long afterward I came across a poem by Luci Shaw that seemed to have been written for it.  I share that with you as well.  Thank you, Mary, for your earth-changing yes. . .

Annunciation (golden) 001Virgin

As if until that moment
nothing real
had happened since Creation

As if outside the world were empty
so that she and he were all
there was–he mover, she moved upon

As if her submission were the most
dynamic of all works; as if
no one had ever said Yes like that

As if that day the sun had no place
in all the universe to pour its gold
but her small room

(Luci Shaw)