Incarnation

Carved wooden altar—wood of manger;

Gold glimmers tabernacle—golden straw.

Stare anew: the sight becomes a stranger

As the piercing star the shepherds saw.

Breath of oxen—breath of God's own life

Exhaled in layers of dust and grime—

There daily work and pain and strife

Did long await His bursting into time.

His two bright eyes stare, imploring

Hearts sheltered, cold, and dim,

Even as we come to kneel, adoring

God in flesh—blind to sight of Him

Who comes to break our shroud of fears,

Of dreams too small, to catch our tears

In tiny hands outstretched. He smiles

To see those weighted down with trials

Stop for one brief moment, darkly gaze

With blank stare at the brightest blaze

Hid in swaddling clothes, flesh to give

To all: to teach us, newborn, to live.

 

Come Hell or High Water

Of course we don't usually have such a clear conversation with God about what He is doing in our lives (or not doing), partly because everything is obscured by the mist of lies, and partly because the conversation happens rather in our actions than our words.  However, a writer must needs put into words such experiences, as for example when we face great trials and tribulations in our lives.  Also, it can help to illumine further truths about our journey by looking at reality bluntly expressed in the words of an ordinary conversation:

---

Me: I'm going to do it come hell or high water.

Jesus: All right, if that's really what you want.

(He lets there be a little hell or high water, proverbially speaking:)

Me: Oh, Lord, take it away! I can't go on like this!

Jesus (gently): That's not what you said in the beginning. You could have said: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

Me: Isn't that what I meant?

Jesus: Is it?

Me: Well...

Jesus: Or did you mean: "I've got this under control and I want to win the victory all by myself."

Me: ...

Jesus: I am with you always, but I will never force Myself on you.

Our Only Comforter

As we honor today Our Lady, Mother of the Church, it seems fitting to speak of her Spouse, the Holy Spirit, in this afterglow of the great solemnity of Pentecost.  Specifically I would like to focus on one particular word describing Him.  While praying the novena leading up to Pentecost, one of His titles burst through the veil formed by the mundane repetition of having heard it said many times through my life:

Comforter.

I was listening to this Veni Sancte Spiritus when the word penetrated into the depths of my heart through the lyrics:

You are our only Comforter.

So many times we desire comfort to counter the trials and tribulations of our lives.  We look for the simple things—the reliable things—the coffee and cookies.

Of course we also look deeper.  We try to find happiness in fulfilling work, in relationships with those dear to us, in following our vocations, and so on.  Yet sooner or later all of these things fail to satisfy us.  The world will fail you left and right, as say the lyrics of the song "I'm Not Alone" from the singer Plumb.

Where do we look?

Everywhere except to the Holy Spirit.  After all, it's incredibly difficult to look at an invisible reality who happens to be the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity.  If you can find a way to look at Him, let me know.

I can't.  Although gazing at the beautiful alabaster image of the Holy Spirit symbolized by a dove in St. Peter's does help.

Looking to Him means opening ourselves to something beyond our control—it means letting go of control—abandoning our expectations.  We may find ourselves tossed on the seas of doubt and fear or joy and longing.  We may feel nothing.  Yet if we do dare to sink deep within ourselves, to stop looking outside, and to find Him within, we may just find that He gives the comfort that the world can never give.  For He gives the comfort of belonging, of being welcome, of being loved: the fulfillment of our hearts' deepest desires.  He gives the comfort of heaven—the comfort of our true home.

Of course He may not give it right away.  He likely won't give all the comfort we desire or at least not all the time.  Yet He can't give any comfort to hearts that are closed to Him.

If we will be patient and trust Him, we will experience comfort according to His promise.

It was the pouring out of the Holy Spirit that brought the Church to birth.  It is His pouring out of Himself on us today that brings us to birth as the Church—as the Mystical Body of Christ.  And it is Our Lady who is the Mother of Christ and therefore also the Mother of the Church.

Veni Sancte Spiritus! Veni per Mariam!

Fool for Christ

"Imagine if you were in love with goodness itself—what wacky things you would do."

This quote resurfaced and I have no recollection of who spoke it or where I heard it.  That matters little enough, though.  It is the thought contained in the quotation and not the speaker to which I wish to draw your attention.

I will digress for a moment first, however.  Yesterday I had the opportunity to go on a spontaneous adventure with a couple of friends.  Having decided upon hiking in the forested park in the middle of the city, we had no expectations of unusual adventure; considering our limited time, it seemed reasonable to enjoy a tamer sort of adventure.  After a brief stop at another friend's house and a dishtowel prophecy—"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson—we continued on to the trailhead.

As we started hiking up the hill, we soon found ourselves scrambling up a ravine with a few pools and trickles of water left within it.  The trail lost its façade of officiality and turned into no more than a deer path.

We might have turned back to find the actual trailhead, but instead we continued on, scrambling over fallen trees and crawling through brush and ferns, following the rocky bed of the ravine in what seemed like a tropical adventure.  The faint trail grew fainter, twisting back and forth across the ravine, sometimes disappearing entirely.

In retrospect, it would have made much more sense to find the trail proper and likely we would not choose that path again knowing what it held.  Yet that makes us all the more grateful for the experience.

You can extrapolate from this story to the adventure of life.  So often we choose to follow the well-beaten trail.  We give in to the pressure of society or the expectations of our friends—or what we imagine them to be—and find ourselves trudging on doggedly, clamping our jaws in the face of the monotony that drags us down.

Let us return now to the quotation with which I began:

"Imagine if you were in love with goodness itself—what wacky things you would do."

It speaks to the heart of what it means to be a fool for Christ.  When you fall so deeply in love with Him—when you learn to trust Him so entirely—you no longer care so much for the security the world offers.  You learn to leap out in faith, knowing that He will catch you.  You embrace every cross and every trial because you know that behind it lies the Providence of the One who loves you more than you love yourself.

Go my friends and be fools for Christ!

Come Always!

"If you offered Me your joys and your moments of recreation, I would send you few trials because it is only your union with Me that I am seeking, and as a rule you come to Me only when you are unhappy.
Then come—oh, come always."

~

I read those words above in a book called Lui et Moi, translated into English as He and I.  The book contains interior conversations between our Lord and Gabrielle Bossis and speaks in various beautiful ways of that desire the Lord has for our love—the desire for intimacy with us, His poor creatures.

Some people seem to live charmed lives, as if the Lord is making all things work together for their good even in this life.  I wonder if this is because they already have given Him their hearts, becoming united with Him here below.

Yet even Job suffered much and he was certainly faithful.  Perhaps the Lord only allowed his sufferings, letting him be stripped of everything he owned, that he too might reach a greater union with his Maker.  That is after all what happened.  Rather than give in to the temptation to curse God for all the evil that seemed to be happening to him, he still blessed the name of the Lord.

In our own lives, I believe it is the same.  Whatever happens to us—good or ill—our Lord allows out of love—out of a desire for union.

All we need to do is come to Him, laying everything before Him like little children, whether it is our joys or our sorrows, our plans for the future or the struggles with past failures.  Always He is there waiting, desiring us more than we can ever desire Him.