Return to the Water’s Edge

          Recent days found me knocking on God’s door a little more insistently, seeking His light for the path ahead, for I have been sensing the edges of my spirit drying up a little, curling inwards, tired and weary once more, hence, getting fraught more easily. Initially, I ascribed it to sadness and adjustment required with the oldest two having left home for studies, the never ending work pressure and all manner of workplace and home shenanigans. While there was no major upheaval, not even the slightest trace of tumult, nonetheless, I felt as if I was being splintered.

          Unsure as to how to proceed, I finally went before Him in Adoration and threw myself into His waiting Heart. With the past weeks being what they had been, I had fallen away from my daily practice of slipping away to be still with my Jesus. Even as my daily Bible readings and prayers continued, the demands of weeks past had drawn me deeper into the whorls of busyness; soon, I had forgotten how important it was just to be still and to do nothing.

          Until today. This being the feast of St Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, my spiritual father, I went in search of some reading with the hope that I would find a door which led to my beloved saint.

          Padre Pio was indeed waiting for me – except that his words were not what I had expected.

Il dolce far niente

The sweetness of doing nothing

          No lightning bolt of illumination, no word speared through my spirit. Instead, it was the call to the sweetness of doing nothing. To let go and to be freed. To pull away from the highways of this world, to return to the water’s edge.

          To watch the changing of the season, the spirit’s summer of cheer and bustle gentling into autumn’s quiet wait.

Lent 1 ~ In the Heart of God

My greatest happiness is to be before the Blessed Sacrament , where my heart is, as it were, in Its centre.   ~  St Margaret Mary Alacoque

          I have been looking forwards to Lent for a few weeks now. Like Christmas, Lent marks an especial time of inner quieting, a time when heaven grants me a singular strength to withdraw from the world and to place my heart into God’s, at Its very centre. 

          Where my journey will take me this year I know not, but no one is ever the same emerging from the time spent in God’s Heart.

Open My Inner Ear

          Last Friday, I had the alluring prospect of the afternoon to myself. After weeks of pushing myself, I was coming to the end of the work week feeling drained, so some hours to rest and let go were precious indeed.

          But then my husband came home from work in the middle of the week, fuming about a change in work plans, necessitating him to attend a long meeting in the city on Friday afternoon.

          Immediately, I found myself asking him if I could tag along. Given what the weeks had been, especially that week, I did wonder inside of me, if I was mad. Mad to forgo physical rest. Mad to endure that long drive to the city and the likelihood of traffic snarls.

          Yet, there was no doubt in my mind. I wanted to go with my husband and while he was at his meeting, I wanted to be in church. I had gone so long without being before the Blessed Sacrament. Jesus had sustained me all this while and would continue to, I knew, but this Friday, after giving so much of myself to others, I wanted to give my Jesus an offering of myself. I wanted to be before Him and to console him by my presence and the offering of my heart, however tattered it was.

          My husband readily agreed. Over the 2 days or so till Friday came, I sensed a change come over me. Something began trickling into my heart. A cool stream of some kind of water, mystical and mysterious. As it tumbled and slipped into the gullies and crevices, my tiredness and tensions yielded unprotestingly to that water. I thus came to Friday, happy and light. Happier than I had been in a long while.

          In my happiness, I told Jesus that He was not to be silent with me. It had been so long since I had been in church and I wanted Him to speak and speak to me all the hours I was before Him.

          Then I spoke of my wish,

Open my inner ear

I didn’t just want to hear things; I wanted Jesus to speak to me through the ear of my heart.

          When Friday morning came, readying for work, I felt that skip of joy inside me, and again, wondered at it. Is it because I’m coming to see You? I suddenly asked. That I chose hours in a simple seat inside a still and empty church instead of an afternoon of deserved rest?

          A tiny sprite of words formed in reply,

My little adorer

          I keeled away from the name. I did not deserve it. All I was, was a mess of a person. One who slipped and tripped and fell more often than she walked upright, clearsighted and steady of heart. Never was this more evident than this October. This October of farewells and a change to life. An October of hoping and of hopes being dashed. Of a reigniting of old fires in our marriage, nefarious fires that had no business coming back to life.

Adorer

          For close to 3 hours in church that day, over and over.

          I left church later that day, tired, but with an inner quiet missing for so long. That Friday led to 4 more incredibly hectic days. My step slowed and I laboured to get through each day.

          But that sweet, cool brook within tripped and skipped on, catching the rays of an invisible sun with every turn and bubble.

          Today, I was home on sick leave. As is my practice, I fight illness with work. Managing to put dinner together, I left the kitchen after some minutes of listening to my husband venting about a mess at work. A sudden weakness had come over me and I needed to sit down. But I also wanted to get away from my husband’s anger and frustrations over work.

          I had barely sat down and begun scrolling through the posts on a forum when it occurred to me that I was giving my time to other people instead of being with my tired husband. That thought had not fully rolled itself out when these words formed,

Carry his cross.

          They were not my thoughts. They were from somewhere else. From within me but not of me. I know it because I did not delay, trying to hedge out of what was needed. Instead, in an immediate obedience pretty much foreign to me, I went to my husband and let him know he had my ear once more.

          I knew then whose Voice it was that I was hearing, that quiet bloom of words within me. I understood the difference between the talking to I often give myself, and this other Voice. When it is from me, often there is a struggle to comply. But when it is my Master’s, it straightens my soul to willing obedience and to genuine humility.

          Open my inner ear. My prayer had been heard.

A Blessing in Disguise

          We have loved zinnias for a long time. They stand for a time of joy. For the time before sorrow visited us.

          We used to have a whole bed of them, every colour, different varieties. They were our special flowers. We had them at a time when orchids were the rage for many of our neighbours. Every morning, going to my window for a brief respite from milk feeds, porridge and diapers, my zinnias had smiled for me in the glory of sunny mornings.

          Then, came a time when our hearts no longer sought them in the joy we once knew. We did try to grow them again and for a time, they flowered. Yet, something was just not the same anymore.

Our zinnias no longer smiled.

          We made an attempt at comfort by trying to grow them elsewhere, but the plants gently refused us. The meaning of this was lost on me in those grey years, but today, I understood:

Our zinnias would not live in the soil of sorrow.

They were, for us, joy, and so, only joy and hope could nourish them to bloom in beauty once more.

          Yesterday, we reeled from a yet another blow. In the church courtyard, I sat in my car, gripping the phone in anguish as my husband told me of a verdict our whole country had been waiting for. Adding to the mountain of injustices and religious bigotry, was yet another racially charged judgement.

          Cut up, I went into church and went before my silent Jesus. I placed before Him our pain and the pain of our country. I placed into His heart our embattled Attorney General. In quick strokes, I laid bare our collective grief, Will things ever change for this land?

          My morning quiet time earlier had been rushed and a trifle harried. Hence, not having had the time to do my Daily Readings then, I went to them now, in the silent church, its stillness untroubled.

…the word of the LORD came through the prophet Haggai:
Tell this to the governor of Judah,
Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel,
and to the high priest Joshua, son of Jehozadak,
and to the remnant of the people:

Who is left among you
that saw this house in its former glory?
And how do you see it now?
Does it not seem like nothing in your eyes?
But now take courage, Zerubbabel, says the LORD,
and take courage, Joshua, high priest, son of Jehozadak,
And take courage, all you people of the land,
says the LORD, and work!
For I am with you, says the LORD of hosts.
This is the pact that I made with you
when you came out of Egypt,
And my spirit continues in your midst;
do not fear!
For thus says the LORD of hosts:
One moment yet, a little while,
and I will shake the heavens and the earth,
the sea and the dry land.
I will shake all the nations,
and the treasures of all the nations will come in,
And I will fill this house with glory,
says the LORD of hosts.
Mine is the silver and mine the gold,
says the LORD of hosts.
Greater will be the future glory of this house
than the former, says the LORD of hosts;
And in this place I will give you peace,
says the LORD of hosts!   ~  Haggai 2: 1 – 9

          I couldn’t believe what I was reading.

But now take courage, Zerubbabel,
and take courage, Joshua,
And take courage, all you people of the land,
For I am with you,
My spirit continues in your midst;
do not fear!

          Take courage! Take courage! Take courage!

Do me justice, O God, and fight my fight
against a faithless people;
from the deceitful and impious man rescue me.   ~  Responsorial psalm – Psalm 43:1

          Do me justice, and fight my fight, O Lord, I murmured over and over, faith tightening its bands around my heart. Looking up at my Silent Jesus, remembering His promise to me last week,

I shall speak to you, I shall speak to your heart, so that you may hear My voice for the joy of your heart

I requested once more in quiet expectation, Speak to me Jesus.

          Immediately, I felt these words written in my ears,

A blessing in disguise.

          I sat there, staring at the words within. A blessing in disguise. It didn’t seem possible. All that was certain was further entrenchment of injustice and evil triumph. And yet, Jesus had whispered a message of contrarian hope,

A blessing in disguise

          I look out now at the bed by the fence, our first zinnias of the year. No longer downcast, unsure of staying. But a profusion of colours in wild and giddy bloom, resolute yet clearly happy in the dance of the late morning’s sun warmed blue~breeze kisses.

A blessing in disguise

          The last vestiges of doubt fled. I believed with all my heart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Asking for a Miracle

It may seem that by coming to Me, and by abiding in the light of My Eucharistic Face, you are doing nothing of any worth, but I tell you that this humble Adoration is the exercise of a great love, and that by means of this adoring love, My Heart is moved to act. Love is moved only by love, and Adoration is the expression of love by which My Heart is compelled to act in the souls and bodies of those whom you represent before Me.   ~  In Sinu Jesu II, When Heart Speaks to Heart

 

          Today, our priests here begin their annual retreat in the silence of the highlands. We had been asked for prayers and I was determined to fulfil in the way God wants. In my morning seeking, God seemed to point towards Adoration. I cannot get to a church now or any day before Friday for Adoration for our beloved priests as well as for the miracle I am praying for.

          To birth new leaders who love and fear the Lord.

          I cannot be in church now to offer my prayer of silence but my spirit can.

          With that, I ask my Angel to take my spirit and rest it before my Hidden Jesus in the Tabernacle of the highlands.

          May my far from perfect offering of love move Him to miracles.

 

 

 

The Secret

What happens in Adoration may be likened to what happens when someone receives a transfusion. It is as if God places a very tiny needle into the soul of the adorer, and by means of an attached tube, transfers His very life into the soul of the adorer. As in a hospital, the tube brings medicine and liquid and helps to heal whatever disease the person is suffering from. This is happening on the spiritual level, bringing spiritual healing. But it is not just the soul of the single adorer that is affected. Through the mystical communion of all believers, that transfiguring and healing divine energy is passed through the single adorer into the entire mystical body of the Church, purifying the Church.

When we go into Adoration, we are disposing ourselves to become nodes, conduits, for the purification of the entire Church, and through the Church, of the entire world.

So it is not a meaningless action, or even an action aimed at one’s own personal purification. It is the essential action to bring Christ’s eucharistic purification into the entire body of the Church, to do reparation for all sins and abuses, and to begin to heal them.   ~  Author of In Sinu Jesu

 

          A few days ago, on my leave, I sensed a faint burning on my right ear. From about 8 years ago, this fire on my ear has been a personal sign that God is holding my ear, firmly asking me to listen out for His voice.

          And so I tried to still myself, to empty myself until my Father bade me to come into His presence, all the while  wondering what God had to say to me.

          It turned out to be about the secret of Eucharistic Adoration.

          Although a few years ago, I began to feel a strange pull towards being alone in a silent church, living so far away from one made it impossible. Almost in a kind of agony from living within endless chaos and empty, debilitating noise, I yearned for the silence of an empty church. For a while, that yearning was appeased through webcams in certain churches which allowed me to enter in spirit for daily Adoration.

          Then, this year, unexpectedly, my schedule required me to travel every Friday to the city where our parish is located. In nothing short of a miracle, I found myself with about an hour of Friday afternoons in church for Adoration.

          When you’ve been forced to live in the desert of pandemonium and unnecessary ruckus for so long and when you come upon an oasis of silence, you do everything you can to make full use of the gift that is given. And so it was with me. Often, I went to my Friday Adoration armed with prayers and meditations and of course, petitions. I was happiest when my Holy Hour was filled to the teeth. My way of saying thanks to the Lord was by bringing basketfuls of offerings.

          Although I’ve been led many, many times to spiritual emptying in order to be filled, it never occurred to me that even in Adoration, my Lord would prefer the humility of an emptied heart – to be filled with Him, to be used by Him.

          Today, after the 9 day novena of offering everything for God, 2 years after my Lenten journey with In Sinu Jesu, Jesus tells me the secret of humble Adoration: the unfurling of the Mercy of the Eucharist.

The infusing of the Spirit of Jesus into our souls

The transfusion of that purifying and healing Power,

through us,

to every member of the Body of Christ

          As this revelation pierced me, golden and orange, the evening sun suddenly swelled through the heart of a tree.

 

 

 

 

Lent 8 ~ In Place of Priests

I want you to call priests to the experience of My friendship…to remain before My Eucharistic Face …adoration and reparation. Draw near to My Open Side in the Sacrament of My Love for them and in their place, and they will begin to follow you there.

Reach out to My priests, not so much by speaking to them, but rather by reaching out to Me for their sake.   ~   In Sinu Jesu

 

          I haven’t prayed much this week. Work has been heavy. I’m falling behind, the cold I’m nursing diminishes any hope of catching up on work. I’m too worn out to even feel frustrated.

          I wonder how Jesus feels. The church is shaking and groaning from its pain and here I am, locked in my world of endless work and a cold determined to stay.

          Nonetheless, today, He deepens this second Lent call to me: come to Me in place of priests, for My priests.

Speak to My priests by coming to me.

Reach out to them by coming to me.

          The cold has turned into a racking cough. More work has been added on. I cannot even remember to enter my inner cloister to pray.

          So, I do the only thing I can: Before I leave for work, I seal my heart to His Tabernacle. I leave it there and go to my day. I hope it is enough. I hope it compensates.

          Yet, I feel nothing at all. No rejection, but no deepening recollection, no heightened spiritual alertness either. Nothing to indicate my heart is where it should be. I try the prayers He has given me. They pass through my heart listlessly, like dry leaves going to their death.

          I think of the dream of the red blouse and dried flowers. In the dream, I am going up to the tabernacle, bearing winter blooms. My wan prayers, the heart I am trying to seal to His – they’re the winter blooms which I must fight myself and the world to continue to offer to my Lord.

          Because He wants me to draw near to His Open Side in the Sacrament of His Love for priests and in their place, so that they too will come to Him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Nothing Stands

          Some days ago, looking over my day, I felt I hadn’t lived it as well as I should. Yet, it wasn’t enough that I saw my less-than-perfect reactions to situations; I wanted to feel its burn deep in my soul. I wanted to really feel remorse for any wrongdoing.

          And so I prayed for that.

          Instead, the answer I received from Jesus was,

Console Me.

O Jesus, Divine Saviour, deign to cast a look of mercy upon Your children, who assemble in the same spirit of faith, reparation, and love, and come to deplore their own infidelities, and those of all poor sinners, their brethren. May we touch Your Divine Heart by the unanimous and solemn promises we are about to make and obtain mercy for ourselves, for the world, and for all who are so unhappy as not to love you. We all promise that for the future:

For the forgetfulness and ingratitude of men, we will console You, O Lord.
For the way You are deserted in Your holy tabernacle, we will console You, O Lord.
For the crimes of sinners, we will console You, O Lord.
For the hatred of the impious, we will console You, O Lord.
For the blasphemies uttered against You, we will console You, O Lord.
For the sacrileges that profane Your Sacrament of Love, we will console You, O Lord.
For the outrages against Your divinity, we will console You, O Lord.
For the injuries of which You are the Adorable Victim, we will console You, O Lord.
For the coldness of the greater part of Your children, we will console You, O Lord.
For the contempt of Your loving invitation, we will console You, O Lord.
For the infidelity of those who called themselves your friends, we will console you, O Lord.
For the abuse of Your grace, we will console You, O Lord.
For our own unfaithfulness, we will console You, O Lord.
For the incomprehensible hardness of our hearts, we will console You, O Lord.
For our long delay in loving You, we will console You, O Lord.
For our tepidity in Your holy service, we will console You, O Lord.
For Your bitter sadness at the loss of souls, we will console You, O Lord.
For Your long waiting at the door of our hearts, we will console You, O Lord.
For the heartless scorn that grieves You, we will console You, O Lord.
For Your loving sighs, we will console You, O Lord.
For Your loving tears, we will console You, O Lord.
For Your loving imprisonment, we will console You, O Lord.
For Your loving death, we will console You, O Lord.

Let us pray: O Jesus!  Divine Savior, from whose Heart comes forth this bitter complaint, “I looked for one that would comfort Me, and I found none,” graciously accept the feeble consolation we offer You, and aid us so powerfully by Your grace, that we may, for the time to come, shun more and more all that can displease You, and prove ourselves in everything, and everywhere, and forever Your most faithful and devoted servants.  We ask it through Your Sacred Heart, O Lord, who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit one God, world without end.  Amen.

 

          Since that day Console Me returned, the Angel has led me to His tabernacle at the unlikeliest times. I use the word ‘led’ because I know it’s not me. Every time I awaken in the middle of sleep, I immediately remember, Console Me. When I have a few stolen minutes between tasks, in the sudden quiet that descends, Console Me instantly looms before my heart. This is improbable of me. And certainly not at a time like now when I come from work so tired I can barely think, when my head is so full, my hours too short.

          And yet, the second Console Me calls, everything that matters falls away, fading in a suddenness.

          In that instant, nothing of this earth stands.

 

 

 

 

 

My Angel Heard Me

          My angel was beside me today and he heard me for sure.

          There’s this beautiful site I discovered a few years ago after prayer to find an online Adoration chapel. Since I live far away from a church and certainly no chapel close by for Adoration, my best recourse was an online adoration site. I visited a few but nothing caught my heart till I found the Divine Mercy Chapel in Poland that offers a 24-hour transmission. This famed chapel houses the original, miraculous painting of the Divine Mercy. From thousands of miles away, before it I’ve knelt countless times, in seeking and in rest, in calm and in tears, in times of anger and in times of fear.

          Each time, my prayers have been answered.

          A visit here became part of my daily morning prayers. I felt the difference on the days I didn’t stop by.

          But there was something more that I sought. I wanted a chapel close to my place of work. Early in my working life, I had worked at a place tucked away from the bustling street, situated practically on church grounds because that St. Francis Xavier church was a mere one-minute trot away. I was going through heartbreak at that time, and the little church, with its green and sedate pre-War cemetery beside it, was where I went to bury my tears. I guess I first learned about Adoration there – without actually knowing anything about it. 

          Now, decades later, I sought this same stillness for my work hours. I sought a church-by-my-heart to escape the relentless, unending sprawler’s revelry that has taken over my office. I wanted the quiet hush of the presence of the True God, a place to get my breath back every time the tenets my colleagues adhere to choke the life out of me.

          Not being tech savvy by a long mile, the obvious didn’t occur to me. Until this morning. I had just read about a priest having so close a relationship with his guardian angel that he conversed with him as he would a close friend, obeying every prompt in faith. Aspiring to this same relationship, I was led to pray the Angel of God prayer,

Angel of God,
my guardian dear,
to whom God’s love commits me here,
ever this day,
be at my side
to light and guard,
to rule and guide.

          After this rose the old wish for a chapel. It was then that the light fell upon me. To load and bookmark the live-streamed Divine Mercy Chapel site on my phone home screen. So every time life got too much, every time I felt myself veering towards prohibited roads, on this First Saturday of the Rosary Month, I finally have a chapel a mere touch away.

          The Angel’s answer to my prayer. His way of saying,

Indeed beside you I am, 

to light and guard,

to rule and guide.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is the Hour of Vigilance

          Towards the end of May, my heart heard two summonses:

Rise!

Arise! Shine!

Those were the calls to action. I knew I was being told to do something. But what?

          A week later, the mists parted slightly.

Beloved, the end of all things is at hand. Therefore be serious and sober-minded so that you will be able to pray.   ~   1 Peter 4: 7-13

           Be able to pray. That was the call. The call to intercession.

          The moment I received it, on the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, when I had just asked for the spirit of atonement for myself, a feral wind blew, almost knocking me down. At church, someone I have come to distrust, came to me, slyly bearing a tale to trouble me.

          To lead me back to old wastelands the Angel had freed me from.

          It took me a week to overcome that Corpus Christi attack. By then, I had lost sight of the call to intercede. Even as I did continue to pray, the clouds had gathered and thickened over my spirit, and my vision was obscured.

          This morning, cleansed and nourished by the peace of wild things, a light returned. Sharp, clear, piercing to the core of my heart.

Stand before the Lord.

… let us be watchful with greater intensity… standing on one’s feet … expression of vigilance…be one who watches… stand guard before the relentless powers of evil… keep the world awake to God.

… be one who stands on his feet: upright in the face of the currents of the time. Upright in the truth. Upright in his commitment to goodness.

Standing before the Lord must always be, in its inmost depths, also a lifting up of men to the Lord, who, in turn, lifts all of us up to the Father.

And it must be a lifting up of Him, of Christ, of His word, of His truth, of His love… be upright, unwavering and ready even to suffer outrage for the sake of the Lord, as shown in the Acts of the Apostles: they “[rejoiced] that they had been found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name” (Acts of the Apostles 5:41).   ~ The Hidden Homilies of Pope Benedict, Holy Thursday, Chrism Mass, March 20, 2008

          I now understood the words my spirit had seen.

          Rise! Arise! – were summonses to return to the watchman’s post I had fallen from in my many weeks of struggles. 

          Shine! was the holy exhortation to keep my soul and the souls of my brethren pilgrims awake to God.

          And then, I remembered an old, old call. One that has returned repeatedly and insistently,

Flee to the hills.

How many times have I pressed the veil to yield its secret, to no avail. But today, in the morning hours scented by the rose~golds of freed breezes, I finally learned its meaning. Flee to the hills is heaven’s shout to me to run and shine the Light of God from the towers, high above the rocks and dunes of turmoil.

          For it is now the hour of vigilance before God.