Letting Him work

So much of the spiritual life of grace I have viewed as me grasping, trying, planning, leading, controlling. What can I do to make myself a saint?

Perhaps I've never been farther off the mark.

"He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant."

This is about peaceful acceptance, knowing I am forever in the hand of an all-knowing, all-loving God Who is leading the dance. All I have to do is rest in His arms and allow Him to carry me. Not passively or slothfully, but trustingly. There is no need for me to "figure it out." What He chooses to reveal to me, how, and when is up to Him entirely. I am His instrument to play upon. I am not the Divine Musician.

The less I struggle in His arms like an impatient child, the more quickly He can teach and stretch me and the more deeply I will sink into His mercy and love.

O my Jesus, I accept everything You have given me because I know it comes from Your perfect love and because I desire to love You in return.

Living it out

For the past few years, I've found myself haunted by Matthew's Gospel story regarding the day of judgment, in which Jesus will separate the sheep from the goats according to how they lived on earth, as measured by the corporal works of mercy.

I've heard priests say that it should be so easy for us to get into heaven -- we already know all the questions on the final exam!  All we have to do is live them out.

And so I began to wonder, to contemplate…what if it's true? What if, when I die and stand before Jesus at the gate of heaven, He says to me:

"I was hungry and you gave Me no food, thirsty and you gave Me no drink."

"But I did, Jesus. I sent monthly checks to charities. I even gave up several years of my life for full-time mission work."

"How many times did you see a homeless man on the street and ignore him? You could have handed him food, or a little money, or even just a smile if you truly had nothing else to give. But you looked the other way.  That was Me.  Every time, it was Me."

………………………

What if, in the end, it's not just about the Ten Commandments?  What if it's not enough to have attended Sunday Masses and avoided stealing on a regular basis?  This week's Gospels have been the "Woe to you's" directed at the Pharisees.  How often am I a Pharisee, following the letter of the law, hung up on the intricacies of right vs. wrong but failing to love Jesus in every person I meet?

This is a chilling reality and a wake-up call for those of us who have grown too comfortable with our superficially Christian lives.

O my God, have mercy on me, a poor sinner!  My Jesus, teach me to love as You love.

What is reality?

I'm becoming increasingly more and more aware that it's not what we think it is. This reality here on earth, material, is so easily separated from the true reality of our homeland of heaven.

And that's what this summer has been -- a search for reality. What is truth? I've seen it, tasted it, felt it…but then after all of this I returned to a place and a life which I once knew, and now I know not.  I can't be this Severna Park girl, or even this Tilyou girl.  I belong not to this world.  I can't grasp the concept of identity found in money and status and success and achievements.  My identity is in Christ alone.  Seeking happiness among these worldly things confuses me. How?? Why??

At the pastoral council meeting last night, all were discussing how to make our parish more welcoming and evangelistic.  A beautiful desire.  But it hit me that we were missing the root, the foundation of it all. Unless each person involved is himself growing interiorly in a personal relationship with Jesus, the exterior works are meaningless. Are we falling more in love with Jesus Christ each day? Our apostolate of love will only reach the rest of the world if it is flowing out of our relationship with Him.

And why do we have excuses for not praying or not attending daily Mass? Recently I, too, have been tempted towards this. Can getting more sleep possibly be more important than receiving Him in the Eucharist?  If I am sleep-deprived, it is a lack of discipline on my part; my priorities are not yet properly ordered. Do we truly believe that we need Him - Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity - and nothing else on this earth?

And on a final note, my world is again being shaken, in a good way, by the words of Fr. Dubay. We, as individuals and as a society, have no real understanding of Christ's directives on poverty.  I can't quote the whole book or even a chapter, but Fr. speaks truth and, in so doing, convicts me in the very depths of my heart.

Jesus said, "Love your neighbor as yourself." And He meant it in the most literal sense.  What gives me the right to eat a single meal and ignore the man who goes without?  St. Thomas More brought the poor into his home to eat at his table.  Why am I not doing the same every day?????

John the Baptist's words: "He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none."  How can I read that and still allow myself to own more than one coat, when I know full well there are people without clothing????????

We call friends and strangers alike our brothers and sisters in Christ.  If my blood sister found herself sick, hungry, or without a home, would I not do everything in my power to meet her every need? What a hypocrite I am for not treating every other human being the same!

I can't justify it anymore, this frivolous living.  Consider, we are told to give from our very need.  Let me be frank.  I have NEVER given out of my need, because I've NEVER had a need.  This is the end of my old life and the beginning of a new one.  I am ECSTATIC to begin truly striving to live as Christ has called us all to live.

My Jesus, have mercy on me, a poor sinner.  My Jesus, I trust in You!

Let me say it again...

I realize that the majority of my blog posts revolve around a single topic, which is evident even just by skimming through the titles.  So I began to ask myself why? Why does the subject of love seem to take top priority in my mind, second only to God Himself?

Because God is love.

Because it is this for which we were made, to love and be loved.  Or, to quote the Catechism: God made me to know Him, to love Him, to serve Him, and to be happy with Him in heaven.  It's as simple as that.

Why do men and women marry? Why are babies born? Why can a smile change the mood of your day? Why do people of all ages desire to give themselves away through service projects and mission trips and volunteer work?

Every answer is love.

Why have divorces, suicides, abortions, poverty, and countless other tragedies become a sad but common reality in our modern society?

Because of a real or perceived absence of love.

My head hurts, trying to wrap my mind around the universality and timelessness of it all.  My heart hurts, trying to grasp the notion that I can do so little, and yet everything I do is magnified and will echo throughout eternity if it is in union with the infinite love of Jesus Christ.  My hands and feet become restless with a holy impatience. Now is the time. We are called to serve.

Missionaries: we serve the world because we love. But let us always remember our place. We are never creators of love, but rather receivers who have now become reservoirs of love.

"We love, because He first loved us." -1 John 4:19

And over all things, love.

This summer, I forgot that God loved me.

Can't say exactly how it happened. Somewhere in uprooting from my mission home to prepare for a new mission field, in the moment when I was most vulnerable, I found myself lost in a whirlpool of fear. What if I'm an unforgiven sinner? What if I'm not good enough for this life or for heaven? What if, without the constant busyness of service, I have no worth and no purpose? 

And underneath it all, the deepest, cruelest lie that was hiding within the recesses of my heart: 

What if God didn't really love me?

What if?

The haunting emptiness, the darkness that I experienced was like nothing I'd ever known. A loneliness that surpassed all human expression.  I searched unremittingly for answers, for comfort, for reassurance and consolation, but I found none.

And then, the light of the sun shone forth as at the break of dawn: my Jesus had mercy on me. I am weak, I am broken, and because of this, He loves me. He loves me! HE LOVES ME!! I have no need of success, of personal merit -- I claim as my own the merits of His Cross.

The miracle of it all is that Jesus did not allow me to experience such great suffering merely to teach me a lesson for the summer of 2013.  No, He makes all things work together for my good. Memories flood back to me from my childhood, adolescence, and now young adult years -- me being unable to accept His love. Feeling unworthy, unclean. Trying to earn His love through my attempts at perfection. And it was never enough.

And how could it be?? Jesus chose not to shed just one drop of His most Precious Blood, but to spill it ALL, washing over the entirety of the earth, over my sins, over my soul, over all space and all time. It is HIS Blood that saves me, that purifies me, that catches me and draws me up to His Father and my Father in heaven.

I can't say what tomorrow will bring. If this summer has taught me anything, it's that God's ways are inscrutable and not my ways. But I do know that today, and tomorrow, and every day for the rest of eternity, I will be held in His love. And He will never let me go. And that is enough for me.

HE is enough for me.