PENTECOST - LORD, SEND OUT YOUR SPIRIT

"The Spirit prepares men and goes out to them with His grace, in order to draw them to Christ. The Spirit manifests the risen Lord to them, recalls His word to them and opens their minds to the understanding of His Death and Resurrection. He makes present the mystery of Christ, supremely in the Eucharist, in order to reconcile them, to bring them into communion with God, that they may 'bear much fruit.' " (Catechism of the Catholic Church, article 737)

"The Spirit prepares men and goes out to them with His Grace, in order to draw them to Christ."

Have our minds ever been brought to a full stop when reading Sacred Scripture? One word, or one complete sentence may suddenly grasp our faculties: our intellect, our memory, our emotions. Perhaps the Holy Spirit may have animated every molecule, every pore in our body to the very 'tip of our fingers, to the tip of our toes' and a 'holy shiver' rushes through our being as He gives Light to our seeking mind.

This Pentecost Sunday, when Spirit Lord inflamed Christ's frightened apostles huddling together in that upper room around Mary, the Spirit's Immaculate spouse, we too are present, because wherever God is, we, born or yet to be born, are held in His Loving Mind.

Do we too look on the Flames of His Love as He hovers over us, over every soul in whom He moves in all times and places? And in each one of us, He animates our thoughts and we experience that Living, rushing Flame as He enlivens our minds and we are drawn into unknown depths of Sacred Scripture. Holy words that we may have read or heard so often throughout our lived years, suddenly flood into our minds and our spiritual awareness is set on Fire.

This may have happened when, after decades of praying the Psalms, one word, one line may reveal an astonishing depth of a life-changing meaning. 

When we proclaim Psalm 139 aloud and substitute our own voice for that of King David's, using his words to address our Creator, Spirit Lord may inspire our own magnificat in our souls, and give us His Power to explain and unite our prayer with the psalmist: 

“May the spoken words of our mouth and the hidden thoughts of our heart win favour with you, O Lord our God” ... so that You may see and love in us what You saw and loved in Your Son, Jesus Christ.

When Spirit Lord animates our thoughts and our words, it is He Who prays through us in glorious praise of God's indescribable love for each soul whom He has created. It is Spirit Lord Who inflames our soul and our prayer soars to new heights of awe and gratitude.

Spirit Lord has prepared us, has now come to us, and is drawing us to Christ by empowering us to sing our magnificent prayer of praise as we sit to meet Him in silent solitude in our candle-lit room.

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.

You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

you discern my thoughts from far away.

You search out my path and my lying down

and are acquainted with all my ways.

Even before a word is on my tongue,

O Lord, you know it completely.

You hem me in, behind and before,

and lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

it is so high that I cannot attain it.

Where can I go from your spirit?

Or where can I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there;

if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

If I take the wings of the morning

and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

even there your hand shall lead me,

and your right hand shall hold me fast.

If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,

and night wraps itself around me,"

even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is as bright as the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

                   (from Psalm 139)

Psalm 139 reveals God's deeply loving, intimate crafting and infinite knowledge of each human being, uniquely and wonderfully made by Him.

God's intimate touch and knowledge of our soul is further detailed in the mystery of verse 16 which reads "... your eyes saw me unformed, in your book all are written down."

Some have translated these words of King David to describe the time when God will open that "book" and have interpreted it to means that God will see all of our actions which will justify His condemnation of us. This understanding of Verse 16 is also at times supported by the verse from St Luke 12:2:

"Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known."    

But in prayer, perhaps Spirit Lord might draw us into a deeper discernment of "your book."

Edith Stein guides us.

She speaks of the "BOOK OF THE CROSS ..."

To open that Book, we must sit humbly available, before a Crucifix.

And we look on the One Whom we have pierced as He lovingly returns our gaze. 

In His Sacred Body, Jesus Lord let flow unquenchable oceans of mercy. All sins were absorbed and consumed into His Suffering Sacred Humanity and the Cross, holding and giving witness to His ocean of suffering, is where the pages of our lives reveal the story of our "actions."

The Cross that pins Him is where we can't run from His spirit, or flee from His face, or climb the mountains of our wrongdoings. The Cross is where He will never stop longing for us to give Him our broken selves, wounded and scourged by our own sins. Even if we lie in the grave, He is there, where His right hand holds us fast (Psalm 139).

The Book of the Cross is the story of our lives, our life-sufferings and death. 

The Book of the Cross is Christ's Book and our book.

In every page of this sacred Book the profound and hidden meanings of every incident, suffering, joy, of our lives are best read under the guidance and inspirations of the Holy Spirit. Wherever in our lives we travel, whatever we become, we are ever under the Gaze of God, a Gaze of utter love, never condemning, ever redeeming.

The glorious Spirit of God has "made present ... the mystery of Christ" and has "opened our minds" through Sacred Scripture to further grasp an "understanding of His Death and Resurrection." 

"FATHER OF LIGHT, FROM WHOM EVERY GOOD GIFT COMES,

SEND YOUR SPIRIT INTO OUR LIVES

WITH THE POWER OF A MIGHTY WIND,

AND BY THE FLAME OF YOUR WISDOM

OPEN THE HORIZONS OF OUR MINDS.

LOOSEN OUR TONGUES TO SING YOUR PRAISE

IN WORDS BEYOND THE POWER OF SPEECH

FOR WITHOUT YOUR SPIRIT

MAN COULD NEVER RAISE HIS VOICE IN WORDS OF PEACE

OR ANNOUNCE THE TRUTH THAT JESUS IS LORD,

WHO LIVES AND REIGNS WITH YOU AND THE HOLY SPIRIT."

                             (Liturgy of the Hours, PENTECOST SUNDAY )

RISEN WOUNDS

"He is risen from the dead and He is Lord"

(Matt 28:6, Confession from Romans 10:9)

                                              "Put your finger here and see my hands,

                                             and bring your hand and put it into my side, 

                                                 and do not be unbelieving, but believe."    

                                                                        (John 20:27)  

                                                                                  

It is Easter Sunday morning. 

On this glorious, astonishing day of miraculous and eternal moments, a day filled with holy joy,

our Savior, Lord, God, directs our inner eye to look on the miracles held in His Sacred Risen Body, to meditate on the five deep canyons where we hide when we are in our darkness and pain and fear and sinfulness. His Sacred Risen Body is the Same Sacred Body that will rush to embrace us when we are finally called Home, His arms open wide, utter joy on His Face. 

                                                      He is our Promised Land.

                                          "Put your finger here and see my hands,

                                           and bring your hand and put it into my side, 

                                               and do not be unbelieving, but believe." 

Pope Benedict XVI described that moment of encounter between Christ Jesus and His apostles... us ... in the barricaded room when our "wounded God " stands among us and His Wounds are laid bare. His "wounds of love," the wounds He longed for when He took on "the passion of man," made evident in the Shroud of Turin, in the "Icon written in blood." 

These Wounds make visible the unquenchable love of God for each of us. These "Risen Wounds" reveal the essence of God, His Divine Vulnerability, that will be made present on His Sacred Body for all time. 

We may continue to ponder for the rest of our lives how and why our souls are so deeply moved by the fathomless depths in the Pope's description: His "Risen Wounds."

On this day of the Risen Lord, when the torrents of God's Mercy are flooding into souls of all time, perhaps we may be inspired to take that phrase to prayer : Risen Wounds. 

Spirit Lord may grace us with a question ... why would the Savior retain the Wounds from the nails on His Sacred Body if His Flesh, after 3 days, had otherwise completely healed from lashings, thorns, punches, blows, bruises. 

In the words, "Risen Wounds", Pope Benedict was drawing on the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas who had helped us to begin to understand that the Savior's Wounds, retained in His Glorified Body, are Wounds that would remain visible until the end of time and beyond.

St. Thomas described them as wounds of dignity, not deformity, beacons of hope, signs of victory won through humility and self-surrender, evidence of a love filled with mercy, gifted to His Father in self-emptying obedience (Summa Theologiae).

Christ Jesus will never not have these Sacred Wounds, visible to all souls for all eternity.

And St. John of the Cross draws us deeply into each wound to locate our souls in those places of healing, redemption: St. John helps us to locate our broken selves, our 'violated ' soul, our fragile and finite humanity  as we hide in the 'clefts' of these Sacred Risen Wounds. There, with our permission, Spirit Lord begins to purify us, consumes our egoism, and we find mercy, restoration, healing, redemption, always encloaked in Love.

“O my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the cliff, 

let me see your face, 

let me hear your voice” 

(Song of Songs 2:14).

Our Divine Saviour, the Rock, pleads with us in a great longing, to enter into His Risen Wounds, especially the 'secret place ' of the Wound in His Side where He yearns to 'see our face, hear our voice.' 

At the Last Supper, Jesus pronounced,

"This is my body ... This is my blood."

St. John Paul II teaches us that in the Lord's use of the present tense, "IS",  He brought about a "mysterious 'oneness in time' between the Triduum , the Last Supper, Passion, and Resurrection, and the passage of the centuries".

The Pope is teaching us that at every Holy Communion, every Holy Eucharist for all time when a priest consecrates the bread and wine, Jesus Lord becomes Present, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.

We step forward, in awe and trembling, to receive His Sacred Body. This is the same Sacred Body that holds the Risen Wounds. All time meets in Him, Divine Time and God's human time. And hosts of Angelic Beings bow low before us because we now carry on our tongue or in our hand the Lord of Hosts : because we have become His living Tabernacle, His enfleshed Ark of the Covenant. If we manage to navigate our way back to our pews, we may be graced to realize that God's Divine Vulnerability is now subject to ourselves. We now hold in our being the One Who bears the Wounds of Love, our Wounded God who is the Icon written in Blood, Who now "sees our face and hears our voice."  

The One Whose wounds of love, Whose Sacred Body holds the "clefts" where we hide, is now hidden within us, truly Present with Father and Holy Spirit, humbly asking for us to gaze on Him with our "feeble love that enthralls" Him.

                                                 "Put your finger here and see my hands,

                                                  and bring your hand and put it into my side, 

                                                    and do not be unbelieving, but believe." 

Our glorious, Risen Lord, ever-loving, ever-present, ever-pleading, ever-longing, ever-waiting, ever-forgiving, ever-redeeming, ever-imprisoned in our being ...

"To live by love is closely to enfold 

the Uncreated Word  - Voice of my Lord!

And with Thee, in my heart of hearts, to hold

the Spirit sending forth His flame adored.

Thus, loving Thee, the Father too is mine :

My feeble heart hath drawn Him from above,

O Trinity, the Prisoner Divine!

           Oh, my poor love."

(St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face)

   HE IS ALIVE.

THE RADICAL POVERTY OF CHRIST DWELLING IN US

Our five week journey through Lent has perhaps held Spirit-blessed treasures. 

We may have been blessed to recognize that many of our human weaknesses have become uncloaked and hidden in them, the spiritual pride that estranges us from God may have been exposed; God's gift of humility may have begun to nurture a contrite heart and we have bent the knee in obedience; being subject to temptations may have gradually revealed to us the reality of our profound poverty in our world arena where having and being in control fills the tabernacle of our self; and we may have been graced at last with the desire to surrender our all into God's love.

Weakness: humility: obedience: temptations: poverty: surrender.

This may have been the story of our encounter with ourselves during our Lent this far. 

This was the Story of Christ Jesus' encounter with Satan in the desert, an encounter that was the prelude to the coming week which opens with Passion Sunday.

Christ's willing Weakness in His Sacred Humanity incurred the devil's assault on the Lord's Humility;

the devil's continued assault on Christ's Obedience to His gift to His Father of total Self-renunciation; 

the devil's strategized temptations against the Lord's radical poverty;

the devil's continued assaults on Christ's chosen and complete surrender to a total impoverishment held in His Sacred Humanity.

These reveal to us the Story of the Lord's Temptations in the Desert ...

He surrendered His Glory to become weak in His Sacred Humanity; 

He personified       Humility; 

                               Obedience;

                               Poverty. 

                                

Our own story of Lent holds the same...

                                       

            weakness; humility; obedience; poverty; surrender.

                                 Our Savior's Story holds our story.

"When the devil had finished every temptation, he departed from Him, for a time"  (Lk 4:1-13).

                              ".... FOR A TIME". 

                            

                                Holy Week is that time. 

During Holy Week, all hell finally released its utter hatred for the One Who had vanquished the devil's  temptations in the desert. Evil had waited for thirty-three years to despoil, mock, destroy the self-renunciation of our Savior. It is through His choice of total Self-renunciation that Jesus redeems us. 

He clothed Himself with the "dark robes of our frailty," with the utter poverty of our weak humanity.

Satan assaulted that radical poverty because in that choice of uncompromising poverty, our poverty, the Lord Jesus became utterly poor. 

"To become human means to become 'poor', to have nothing that one might brag about before God. To become human means to have no support, no power ... Jesus held back nothing. He clung to nothing, and nothing served as a shield for him": 

"Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at, but emptied himself" (Phil 2:6).

Satan despises this poverty, weakness, this humility, this obedience, this surrender to love because the devil has the deepest fear of virtues that he cannot fight.

This is Christ's Mighty Powerlessness. 

And when we allow Him to dwell in us, He becomes our Might in our powerlessness. 

When we humbly acknowledge our human frailty, our finiteness, our lack of control, our sinfulness, we allow Christ's power to work within us. 

And Spirit Lord speaks to our souls when we read and respond to the words of St. Paul:

"That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, I am strong." (2 Cor 12: 9-11)

Perhaps in our prayer this holy week, we might sit with this reflection from Johann Baptist Metz :

    "Have we really understood the impoverishment that Christ endured? Everything was taken from him during the passion, even the love that drove him to the cross. No longer did he savor his own love, no longer did he feel any spark of enthusiasm. His heart gave out and a feeling of utter helplessness came over him. Truly he emptied himself (Phil 2:7). God's merciful hand no longer sustained him. God's countenance was hidden during the passion and Christ gaped into the darkness of nothingness and abandonment where God was no longer present. He reached his destiny, stretched taut between a despising earth that had rejected him and a faceless heaven thundering God's 'NO' to sinful humanity. Jesus paid the price of futility." 

                                     And the Savior asks only this of us:

             "Couldn't you keep watch with me even for one hour?" (Mk 14:37)

MIRACLES OUT OF HOLY DARKNESS - 5TH SUNDAY OF LENT

Lent: a time of the Mystical Presence of God, a time of transformation, powerlessness, spiritual dryness, a wilderness time when our  soul prays without feeling His nearness or experiencing His sweet consolations. If our quest for God during these parched times draws our soul to acts of raw faith then we may thank Him with a holy joy which is an un-felt joy, because in such spiritual drought, we may be certain that our prayer is being nurtured into maturity and our soul is being uniquely perfected by Spirit Lord Himself. 

"Prayer finds its supernatural efficacy in the quality of the faith that animates it" (Blessed Marie Eugene of the Child Jesus).

When the Lord permits us to endure times of painful spiritual darkness, our souls are being de-formed in order to re-form and trans-form us. And the growing pains wound. The quality of our faith seems to be being stretched to breaking point because God needs it to hold a  measure of His supernatural power to join Him in a willing suffering that will win Him many souls.

Such are times of great transformation because our faith is being measured by and empowered by God Himself, animated by the gifts of Spirit Lord. And in this spiritual darkness, we may ever remember ... where are the gifts, so too is the Giver.

We can locate our own Lenten spiritual journey in an event involving the deep suffering of Martha, friend of Jesus (John 11:21-39).

Martha and Mary had sent word to Jesus to let Him know that their brother, Lazarus, was very ill. 

Jesus had great love for these three people.

Yet, when the Lord heard about Lazarus' serious illness, and despite the confusion His decision brought about in the Apostles, Jesus delayed returning to the home of His beloved friends.

When He and the Apostles finally arrived, Lazarus had died four days before and was already entombed:

"LORD, BY NOW THERE WILL BE A STENCH; HE HAS BEEN DEAD FOR FOUR DAYS" (John 11:39).

If ever we have been in a crisis, or immersed in an overwhelming circumstance that shakes our faith, or unable to breathe in a deep hurt that seems to draw only confusing silence from Heaven, we may hear something of our own wounded bewilderment voiced by Martha to Jesus when He finally arrived:

"Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."

There had been only silence from Jesus to Martha's message to Him when she pleaded for His intervention. These, her words to Him, seem to suggest that her faith in Him was shaken, a life-time period of four days when Martha may have been immersed in a dense spiritual darkness. 

Perhaps we too may be permitted to endure Martha's spiritual suffering. 

At such times, and during our Lenten darkness, we remember the profound reflection from St. John of the Cross: "God does not fit in an occupied heart."

We plead with Him to help us to see, name and surrender all that is disordered and that occupies our heart, distracting us from His Presence in our souls so that we may make greater space for Him. 

When He draws near to us, our spiritual eyes, unaccustomed to the brilliance of God's Presence in our soul, become temporarily, spiritually blind. This is the time when St John of the Cross guides us and leads us into the "holy darkness," when our blindness causes us to stand still, when we have no prayer formulae to help us to move in the "right" direction to find Him, when our senses are powerless to "feel" our way, where our ability to reason is enfogged, and our will, often fed  by our disordered emotions, begin to be purified, when God's sweet consolations and enlightenments are starkly absent. 

In this precious holy darkness of deeper purification, when our Director is Spirit Lord Himself, we begin to die to self. 

We return to the Gospel exchange between Jesus and Martha to hear Martha's astonishing proclamation of faith in her profound darkness. We hear her living those mysterious words of Blessed Marie Eugene:

"Prayer finds its supernatural efficacy in the quality of the faith that animates it." 

The Lord Jesus tells Martha that He is the resurrection and the life, that whoever believes in Him, even though they die, they will live:

 

And in full hearing of the silent, stunned crowd, He digs deeper into Martha's soul,

"... whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

OUT OF THOSE DEPTHS OF HER HOLY DARKNESS, OUT OF HER DESOLATION, HER ABJECT POWERLESSNESS, HER PROFOUND GRIEF, OUT OF THE SEEMING BETRAYAL FROM A DEEPLY LOVED AND TRUSTED FRIEND. FROM THESE DEPTHS OF HER INTERIOR TURMOIL, WE HEAR MARTHA'S STAGGERING WORDS OF FAITH: 

"YES, LORD, I BELIEVE THAT YOU ARE THE MESSIAH, THE SON OF GOD, WHO IS TO COME INTO THE WORLD."

We may almost see the shocked faces of those crowding around Jesus and Martha, pushing forward to hear every word spoken by them. 

And the Lord Jesus approaches the tomb, commands that the stone be rolled back, and calls Lazarus out from death.

"Prayer finds its supernatural efficacy in the quality of the faith that animates it." 

Jesus, God had probed deep into the soul of Martha, found there a magnificent faith that had been perfected with the spiritual scalpel of suffering, and He, the Lord, had rewarded the "quality of the faith" that He found there, and immediately, He raises Lazarus from the

dead.

We may take to prayer the words of St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face:

"Jesus works miracles for his dearest friends only after he has tested their faith. He let Lazarus die, even though Martha and Mary sent word that he was sick. But after the trial, what rewards! LAZARUS RISES FROM THE DEAD."

From our own holy darkness, where God is re-forming and trans-forming our souls, we may ask: how can we surrender ourselves endlessly when we feel that we have nothing to give Him, only utter powerlessness, desolation? 

We pray again with St. Therese ...

                         "And even when I have nothing, I will give Him this nothing.

                          You, Lord, will descend to my nothingness and 

                          transform that nothingness into living fire."

We will then hear the Lord's reply:

                                

"SEE, I COME QUICKLY. I HAVE MY REWARD IN HAND" (REVELATION 22:12).

LAETARE SUNDAY REFLECTION

"HE HAS CALLED YOU OUT OF DARKNESS INTO HIS OWN WONDERFUL LIGHT" 

(1 PETER 2:9).

Laetare Sunday: the Gospel moment when we glimpse the glorious Light of New Life in the Resurrection, when our Lenten sacrifices are paused and our souls strain toward the splendour of our rising in the Risen Christ.

In the Gospel on this day of joy, when we quietly step into the Gospel scene, we may find ourselves made speechless by what we witness as the events unfold. 

    Jesus Lord "was passing by and saw a man blind from birth" (John 9:1-41).

Perhaps we notice that the blind man did not ask the disciples to lead him to Jesus to ask for healing. We don't hear the man addressing Jesus so we may infer the possibility that he had never heard of this Healer. He was simply a blind man, standing at the wayside, listening to the disciples of Jesus asking the Lord if the man's blindness was the result of the sins of his parents. Jesus reveals to us that, "Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God may be made visible through him." 

The man born blind is completely silent.  

Jesus Lord chose this one to be healed, one who was enduring lifelong suffering and darkness. 

And the healing would give glory to God.

If we take this to prayer, we may be confronted with a question that may unsettle our souls: we are believers in the gratuitous Self-outpouring love of God. Do we accept our sufferings in order to give God glory when He wills to heal us?

 

Or when He wills to withhold His healing, for the salvation of our souls or for the salvation of the souls we pray for?

St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face gives us our answer ...        

"Does He not see our anguish and the burden that weighs us down? Why does He not come and comfort us? ... He knows that it is the only means of preparing us to know Him as He knows Himself, and to become ourselves Divine!"

And our souls are quieted in the Presence of the Lord. 

The man born blind is completely silent in the Presence of the Lord.

Our minds may remember the little petition: "Lord, be near to those who seek You without knowing it" ( Liturgy of the Hours). 

And the Lord draws near to the man born blind whose life then changes for ever.

                                              

            We hear the Lord Jesus speak....

                                          

                      "'As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.'

                         ... he spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle 

                                 and spread the clay on his eyes" (John 9:1-41).

   And Christ Jesus gives a man born blind the light of life, physical light and, as the remainder of the Gospel testifies, spiritual light; a man who had never known daylight and who had dwelt also in a profound spiritual darkness.

We may pause to ponder in prayer: who are we in this Gospel miracle moment?

At the moment of our Creation ... 

                   "the Lord God formed man from the clay of the earth, 

                       and he breathed into his face the breath of life, 

                                  and man became a living soul" (Gen. 2:7).

            

   At the beginning of time, God, Creator, uses 'clay' and forms us, gives us life from the dust: the Breath of God breathes into our being and our soul is given life in God.

       At that moment in Genesis, we are physically formed into a living being from the 'clay' of the earth.

       At that moment in John's Gospel, Jesus Lord, God, "spat on the ground and made clay." St. Thomas Aquinas teaches us that in this action, Christ is revealing Himself to be the same Creator Who formed man from the clay in Genesis. 

 Christ uses the clay of the earth, made unclean by Adam, and with his own bodily fluids, He sanctifies and repairs the work of creation.

      He touches the blind man ... us. Christ, God, breathes new spiritual life and sight into our souls, opening our eyes to recognise ourselves again as newly created souls in Himself.

     Jesus, Lord, God, "as long as He is in the world," never stops loving us into new life in Him.

We were, we are, and we always will be, spiritually re-formed and re-created, endlessly, in Love, into Himself.         

After Jesus heals him, physically and spiritually, we learn from the Gospel that he became the target of abuse and hatred by the Pharisees.

And, once again, Jesus Lord seeks him out and in his new spiritual sight, the man proclaimed his glorious act of faith in Him: 

            "I do believe, Lord.  AND HE WORSHIPPED HIM" (John 9:1-41).            

Blessed Marie-Eugene of the Child Jesus helps us understand why Jesus sought him out again, now that his life in Christ was changed forever.              

"Why are we in this world? The great reason is that God is Love and that He has loved us. He created you out of love, He called you out of love, and this love remains alive. What He has loved, He still loves; what He has given, He will never take away. As St. Paul, who deeply understood God’s nature, reminds us: “The gifts of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29), and what He has begun, He will bring to completion!

God cannot let us go, He cannot abandon us, because He loves us. Our great hope is God; our great hope is eternity! He sees all things in truth and clarity, while we only see appearances. He sees us in our eternal reality. He longs to share His vision with us,  to awaken our hope in this eternal reality" (Blessed Marie-Eugene of the Child Jesus). 

GOD NEVER ABANDONS HIS CHOSEN ONES.

CHRIST IS THE LIGHT LIFTING US OUT OF OUR BLINDING SPIRITUAL DARKNESS.

And in His Love, He transforms us into ...

"THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD; ...

WHOEVER FOLLOWS ME WILL HAVE THE LIGHT OF LIFE"

(John 9:1-41).

                        THIS IS LAETARE SUNDAY: A DAY OF HOLY JOY.

A CALL TO PRAYER

On the Third Sunday of Lent in the Catholic Church's Scripture readings, we hear King David's plea to us to join him as he turns to God in prayer.

                                                                  PSALM 95 ...

                                 "COME !  

                                      HARDEN NOT YOUR HEARTS.

                                            LET US COME INTO HIS PRESENCE .....

                                                   LET US BOW DOWN AND WORSHIP....

                                                           LET US KNEEL BEFORE THE LORD WHO MADE US..."

                                  

It is Spirit Lord, whose words are given voice through His servant King David, Who is beseeching us to kneel down alongside His servant in this passionate call to come into God's Presence with deep humility, reverence, awe.

 

                Spirit Lord's appeal to us in these words of King David is an urgent call to prayer. 

 

                Do his words, echoing to us down through the millennia, resonate in our souls now, today?

As we set out on our Third Week of Lent, we may be given to recognize if we have been tempted to be less vigilant in our Lenten prayer promises. If so, we may dig deep and begin to identify the subtle strategies that have been utilized to tempt us to turn away from our walk alongside Jesus on His journey toward Jerusalem. Spiritual weariness? Spiritual apathy? Stress at work, at home? Have we been permitted to endure the sense of a spiritual fragility that taunts us by suggesting to us that these steps to Calvary are too risky, painful, too filled with potential life-changes that may cause our "normal" to drift out of our control?

It is with great spiritual joy that we realize, yes, we have been tempted to abandon our Lenten sacrifices.

A temptation is not a sin. Jesus the Lord was tempted by Satan himself in the Judean wilderness (Matthew 4; Luke 4). Lent is our wilderness time and when we are being tempted during these precious weeks, our proximity to the Living Furnace of Love is fine-tuning our souls for Divine possession and transformation.

It is good to remember an insight from St. Therese of the Child Jesus who was sorely and endlessly tempted, whose physical and emotional and spiritual temptations assaulted her, simultaneously, and without rest.....

"It is so consoling to think that Jesus, the strong God, experienced all our weaknesses, that He trembled at the sight of the bitter chalice - the cup that He had longed for so ardently."

And her advice to us as we falter? ...

"Always keep lifting your foot to climb the ladder of holiness, and do not  imagine that you can mount even the first step. All God asks of you is good will."

"It is God Who, in His good will toward you, begets in you any measure of desire or achievement. "(Philippians 2:12-16)

HE IS THE GIVER. HE IS THE GIFT. HE IS THE DESIRE. HE IS THE REWARD. HE IS NEVER NOT PRESENT IN OUR SOULS.

HE IS THE ALL, IN ALL.

                 PRAYER IS OUR GOOD-WILL STEP IN OUR MOUNT TOWARD GOD. 

"OUR FULCRUM IS GOD; OUR LEVER, PRAYER; PRAYER WHICH BURNS WITH LOVE. WITH THAT, WE CAN LIFT THE WORLD." (St. Therese)

To turn toward God is already to pray.....the desire to pray and the power to pray are gifted to us, rising

from the depths of our soul, inspired and graced and given breath by the movement of the Holy Spirit dwelling in those depths. To breathe is to pray if the pray-er loves God. 

                    Does the plea of Spirit Lord, calling us to pray through the words of King David,

now resonate more loudly in our souls ...

                                 "Come! ...bow down.....kneel before the Lord Who" made us?

Perhaps, when we are bowing down and kneeling before Him, we may  breathe in the words of Our Lord Jesus as He rushes to come to us in our act of humility and His invitation to us is a deeply personal one...

                                                          

              "... (Hear Him speaking our name) ... Come away by yourself with me to a secluded place and rest a while." (Mark 6:31)

We may have pre-arranged to meet Him for a regular 10 minutes each night of Lent, in a darkened , silent place, with a little artificial candle for light. 

A prayer of petition first prayed by St. John of the Cross may begin and conclude our wordless conversation with Our Lord each night...

"NOW I ASK YOU, LORD, NOT TO ABANDON ME AT ANY TIME IN MY RECOLLECTION 

                                              FOR I AM A SQUANDERER OF MY SOUL."  

                                                      (Maxims and Counsels)

THE TRANSFIGURATION OF THE LORD

"This is the moment when the whole Trinity appeared: 

The Father in the Voice;

the Son in the Man; 

the Holy Spirit in the Shining Cloud" (St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III).              

                                           "THIS IS MY CHOSEN SON; LISTEN TO HIM."                        

"And behold, two men were conversing with Him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of His exodus that He was going to accomplish in Jerusalem.

.

                                            Then from the Cloud came a Voice that said,

                                          'THIS IS MY CHOSEN SON; LISTEN TO HIM.' " 

                                                          (LUKE 9:28-36).    

During the Transfiguration of the Lord, His Face "changed in appearance and His clothes became dazzling white."  Peter, James and John witnessed the Glory of God transfiguring the Sacred Humanity of Christ Jesus. But then, we are given cause to pause and wonder and be drawn into the discussion that was underway between the Lord and Moses and Elijah who "... spoke of His exodus that He was going to accomplish in Jerusalem."

                It is with utter shock that we begin to understand the meaning of this conversation.

Christ's "exodus" would begin on Holy Thursday evening. His suffering and crucifixion would bring about the completion of the ancient Covenant by means of the required sacrifice of His Own Body on Good Friday. 

When discussion of Christ's Exodus entered the glorious moment of His Transfiguration, the brilliance of God's Glory held hidden the suffering He would endure during His Passion.

CHRIST JESUS' TRANSFIGURATION AND HIS SUFFERING DURING HIS PASSION ARE ONE.

When we are being blessed with consolations from God that cause our souls to soar in holy joy, our times of suffering are hidden.

             They are never not present.

In the horror of the Passion and brutal crucifixion, the brilliance of God's Glory was hidden in the depths of His unspeakable pain.

                     

             His Glory was never not present.

When we are gripped in sorrow, when we're enveloped in a darkness that suggests the absence of God, when we are engulfed in the depths of spiritual desolations, the glory of God's consolations are hidden in our pain. 

              

            His consolations are never not present. 

"Does He not see our anguish and the burden that weighs us down? Why does He not come and comfort us? ...He knows that it is the only means of preparing us to know Him as He knows Himself, and to become ourselves Divine!" (St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face)

As we sit with Peter, James and John on Tabor, silenced and silent in the Shadows cast from the shining Cloud, in the Presence of the Holy Trinity, what do we hear Christ Jesus say to us when we do what Our Father asks of us...

                    

            "Listen to Him".