Threshold of Hope

 

 

THERE is much talk these days of darkness: "dark clouds", "dark shadows", "dark signs" etc. In the light of the Gospels, this could be seen as a cocoon, wrapping itself around humanity. But it is only for a short time…

Soon the cocoon withers… the hardened eggshell breaks, the placenta depletes. Then it comes, quickly: new life. The butterfly emerges, the chick spreads its wings, and a new child emerges from the "narrow and difficult" passage of the birth canal.

Indeed, are we not on the threshold of Hope?

 

The Master Painter

 

 

JESUS does not take away our crosses — He helps us to carry them.

So often in suffering, we feel God has abandoned us. This is a terrible untruth. Jesus promised to remain with us "until the end of the age."

 

OILS OF SUFFERING

God permits certain sufferings in our lives, with the precision and care of a painter. He allows a dash of the blues (sorrow); He mixes in a bit of red (injustice); He blends a bit of grey (lack of consolation)… and even black (misfortune).

We mistake the stroke of the coarse brush hairs for rejection, abandonment, and punishment. But God in his mysterious plan, uses the oils of suffering—introduced into the world by our sin—to create a masterpiece, if we let him.

But not all is grief and pain! God also adds to this canvas yellow (consolation), purple (peace), and green (mercy).

If Christ Himself received the relief of Simon carrying his cross, the consolation of Veronica wiping his face, the comfort of the weeping women of Jerusalem, and the presence and love of his Mother and beloved friend John, will not He, who commands us to pick up our cross and follow Him, not also permit consolations along the Way as well?

Prepare Your Heart!

WITH URGENCY I write this tonight… we must put our hearts right with God. We must look squarely at our sin, and repent of it — leave it behind, at the foot of the Cross.

CONFESSION… we must go regularly. St. Pio said every 8 days. Pope John Paul II said every week. Once a week… come to the Father, pour out your heart, and let him speak words of forgiveness and healing. Why be afraid of so great a gift?

I can hear objections. But it is more important than work. More important than kid’s soccer. More important than watching television. Our soul is more important than these things.

We must prepare our hearts to receive a great Light by ridding anything in our heart which would create a shadow.

IN REPLY to someone who wrote, doubting that God could speak through the violence of nature:

    Creation belongs to God, and as such, he has the right to assert his presence when and how he pleases. We know from the revelation of Jesus Christ, and of scripture, that God is not just loving, God IS love. Thus, he is merciful, patient, and forgiving. But he is also just, and because he is our Father, scripture teaches that he also disciplines us.

    Neither does God force humanity to love him… but the wages of sin is death. In other words, humanity reaps what it sows. If we sow destruction, that’s what we reap, both naturally and spiritually. Continue reading

Visions and Dreams


Helix Nebula

 

THE destruction is, what one local resident described to me as of "biblical proportions". I could only agree in stunned silence after seeing the damage of Hurricane Katrina first hand.

The storm occurred seven months ago–only two weeks after our concert in Violet, 15 miles south of New Orleans. It looks like it happened last week.

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DURING prayer today, a word came to me…

    It is no longer the eleventh hour. It is midnight.

Later on around noon, a group of women prayed over Fr. Kyle Dave and I. As they did, the church bell tolled 12 times.

AT MORNING Mass, the Lord began speaking to me about “detachment”…

Attachment to things, people, or ideas keeps us from being able to soar like an eagle with the Holy Spirit; it muddies our soul, preventing us from perfectly reflecting the Son; it fills our heart with other-ness, rather than with God.

And so the Lord wishes us to be detached from all inordinate desires, not to keep us from pleasure, but to enrole us in the joy of heaven.

I also understood more clearly how the Cross is the only Way for the Christian. There are many consolations in the beginning of the sincere Christian journey–the “honeymoon”, so to speak. But if one is to progress into the deeper life toward union with God, it requires a self-renunciation–an embrace of suffering and self-denial (we all suffer, but what a difference when we permit it to put to death self-will).

Didn’t Christ already say this?

Unless a grain of what falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit. –John 12:24

Unless the Christian embraces the crosses of life, he’ll remain an infant. But if he dies to himself, he will produce much fruit. He will grow into the full stature of Christ.

FROM the first night of the St. Gabriel, LA parish mission:

    Pope John Paul II seemed to speak as the eternal optimist — the glass was always half full. Pope Benedict, at least as a Cardinal, tended to see the glass half empty. Neither of them was wrong, for both views were rooted in reality. Together, the glass is full.

TODAY’s best line on the tour bus (writing from St. Gabriel, Louisiana):

Mommy, I lost my gum!

Where is it Greg?

In Levi’s mouth!

JESUS continues to send me to near empty churches… but there is at least one lost sheep in attendance. This I am sure of.

Which of you men, if you had one hundred sheep, and lost one of them, wouldn't leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one that was lost, until he found it? –Luke 15:4

AT times God seems so far away…

But He is not. Jesus promised to remain with us until the end of the age. Rather, I think there are times when He draws so near in His transfigured brightness, that one’s soul squints until it closes its eyes. Thus, we think we’re in the dark, but we are not. The soul is blinded by Love itself.

There are other times also when the sense of abandonment comes because of adverse trials. This too is a form of Christ’s love, for in permitting this particular cross, He is also preparing for us a tomb from which to rise.

And what is supposed to die? Self-will.

Wings of Charity

BUT can we really fly to heaven on just the lift of faith (see yesterday’s post)?

No, we must also have wings: charity, which is love in action. Faith and love work together, and normally one without the other leaves us earthbound, chained to the gravity of self-will.

But love is the greatest of these. Wind cannot lift a pebble from the ground, and yet, a jumbo fuselage, with wings, can soar to the heavens.

And what if my faith is weak? If love, expressed in service to one’s neighbour is strong, the Holy Spirit comes as a mighty wind, lifting us when faith cannot.

If I have faith to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. –St. Paul, 1 Cor 13

    FAITH is not believing because we have proof; faith is trusting when we’ve run out of proof. –Regina concert, March 13, 2006

Consolations, warm feelings, spiritual experiences, visions, etc. are all like fuel to get one down the runway. But that invisible thing called faith is the only force which can lift one toward heaven.

That Shining Moon


It shall be established for ever as the moon,
and as a faithful witness in heaven. (Psalm 59:57)

 

LAST night as I looked up at the moon, a thought burst into my mind. The heavenly bodies are analogies of another reality…

    Mary is the moon which reflects the Son, Jesus. Though the Son is the source of light, Mary reflects Him back to us. And surrounding her are countless stars–Saints, illuminating history with her.

    At times, Jesus seems to "disappear," beyond the horizon of our suffering. But He has not left us: at the moment He seems to vanish, Jesus is already racing toward us on a new horizon. As a sign of His presence and love, He has also left us His Mother. She does not replace the life-giving power of her Son; but like a careful mother, she lights the darkness, reminding us that He is the Light of the World… and to never doubt His mercy, even in our darkest moments.

After I received this "visual word", the following scripture raced by like a shooting star:

A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. –Revelations 12:1

I JUST walked into my prayer room, and my third son Ryan, who just turned two, was standing on his tippy-toes trying to kiss the feet of a crucifix. He just turned two… So I lifted him up and held him there for the kiss. He paused, and then turned his head and kissed the wound on Christ’s side.

I began to tremble and was overwhelmed with emotion. I realized that the Holy Spirit was moving deep within my son, who cannot even form a sentence, to comfort Christ, who is looking over a fallen world about to enter its Passion.

Jesus have mercy. We love you.

HIS mercy is always His love for us precisely in our weakness,

our failure, our wretchedness

and sin.

–Letter from my spiritual director

The Light of the World

 

 

TWO days ago, I wrote about Noah’s rainbow—a sign of Christ, the Light of the world (see Covenant Sign.) There is a second part to it though, which came to me several years ago when I was at Madonna House in Combermere, Ontario.

This rainbow culminates and becomes a single ray of bright Light lasting 33 years, some 2000 years ago, in the person of Jesus Christ. As it passes through the Cross, the Light splits into a myriad of colors once again. But this time, the rainbow illuminates not the sky, but the hearts of humanity.

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AFTER the Divine Liturgy (Ukrainian Mass) during Lent, all of us enter into the aisle beside the pew, while the priest recites a prayer: “Having suffered the passion, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy us.” Then everyone kneels and bows their face to the ground. This is sung three times–a beautiful act of humility and homage.

This morning, as the priest began to recite the prayer, I heard in my heart what I felt immediately was my guardian angel speaking: “I was there. I saw him suffer.”

I bowed my face, and wept.

Covenant Sign

 

 

GOD leaves, as a sign of his covenant with Noah, a rainbow in the sky.

But why a rainbow?

Jesus is the Light of the world. Light, when fractured, breaks into many colors. God had made a covenant with his people, but before Jesus came, the spiritual order was still fractured—broken—until Christ came and gathered all things into Himself making them "one". You could say the Cross is the prism, the locus of the Light.

When we see a rainbow, we should recognize it as a sign of Christ, the New Covenant: an arc which touches heaven, but also earth… symbolizing the twofold nature of Christ, both divine and human.

In all wisdom and insight, he has made known to us the mystery of his will in accord with his favor that he set forth in him as a plan for the fullness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth. Ephesians, 1:8-10

Dense Forest

FEELING the drag of my flesh after Communion, I had the image of being on the edge of a very dense and ancient forest….

Barely able to move through the dark thicket, I was entangled in branches and vines. Yet, the occasional ray of Sonlight pierced through the foliage, momentarily bathing my face in its warmth. Instantly, my soul was strengthened, and the desire for freedom was overwhelming.

How I long to reach the open plains, the rugged wild where the heart runs free and skies are limitless!

…then I heard a whisper, seemingly carried on a shaft of Light:

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

OFTEN we enter Lent with a sense of trepidation–a fear of the sacrifice of dying to self.

I suppose it is how the grain feels as it is buried beneath the furrow, or the caterpillar as it is entombed by the cocoon, or the trout as it is encased beneath the winter ice.

But how tragic if the seed were to lay on top of the furrow, only to be blown away by the wind! Or the caterpillar to refuse the cocoon and never rise with wings! Or the fish to escape icy waters and suffocate in the snow!

O Soul, embrace this Cross before you. There is Resurrection beyond the tomb!