The Ecstasy and the Agony

 In our beautiful Cathedral, we have a mural that hangs directly behind the crucifix at the altar.

The mural is by Murillo of the Annunciation fitting since our Cathedral is named the Cathedral of the Annunciation of Mary.  The Annunciation depicts the angel Gabriel kneeling before Mary, telling her the good news of a son to be born of her and of Mary’s Fiat saying yes to God’s plan in her life.  One can imagine not only the trepidation but also unbounded joy that Mary must have felt at this announcement. “The  Lord has done great things for me and holy is His Name.”

So is it not ironic that at the same time Gabriel is blessing Mary with this message that just in front of the image is the crucified Christ on the cross?  The most terrible agony of the Blessed Mother.

And when we reflect on our lives, do we not find sometimes that during times of great sorrow or distress in our lives, that something joyous or beautiful also appears?

Is it not with trust that we must keep plodding on through sorrows, through hard times and acknowledge the joys that make their appearance sometimes at those times also?  If we don’t we are perhaps missing out on the beauty of our faith.  The total disparity that awakens our souls to the divine. How can something so joyous happen when we are feeling so upset?

It hopefully reminds us of the disparity Mary felt, each time she held things in her heart. Those sorrows she would experience seeing her son ridiculed and beaten, hanging on the cross yet also knowing He was here to open the gates of Heaven for her and all mankind. 

Her life was truly ecstasy and agony and yet she left us a gracious and glorious gift of gentleness, calmness and peacefulness.

We await the coming of our Lord at Christmas.  We know we must continue to suffer in this life. So we pray that we too can not ignore the joys and sprinkle among our sorrows for that is what life is about. Waiting for glorious resurrection of our all souls, eternally united with God.

 

Trust

I don’t know how to be a Christian without joy or hope.  I know of too many friends and families experiencing so much sadness or health problems.  There are couples wanting to have children who only experience miscarriages, couples who have children with disabilities or constant health problems. Then I have my own worries and problems as well.

As we age, we experience life changing events that scar us, make us wary to get up in the morning.  It is hard.

And it is especially hard to be happy some days, to put one foot in front of the other. Some days I don’t even want to get out of bed!

Sometimes I look in bad places for help, like alcohol, overeating, or drugs to help think less about my problems.  Deep down I know these don’t really take away the sadness or anxiety. It comes back full force once the effect has worn off.

But, I have found that increasing my trust in God seems to grow the seed of joy inside my soul.  It some how gives me the strength to get up and face the world again.  The more I give over to God, the more I am able to deal with life.

Now, I’m not jumping up and down for joy most days, but I have truly found a peacefulness in dealing with constant problems and worries.  It’s like a warm fire I know I can go back to any time I get cold.  God is the reason for that fire.  I know it is His peace that helps my heart sigh and know He is in charge. Even if I don’t like where things are going in my life because I cannot control them, I know He has my back. 

That control thing is hard to give up. But I discovered a prayer that helps me do it.

Dear God,

Please put me where you need me to be this day. You know I worry about my family and that I should always be there to help and that is impossible. So put me where I can help the most this day. I trust in you.

 

Trust

such a small word for such a HUGE action.

 

The Smile is Coming!

 

Technology is constantly advancing, but how wonderful it would if scientific and technological innovation brought greater equality and social inclusion with it. How wonderful it would be if, while discovering faraway planets, we could also rediscover the needs of our brothers and sisters who orbit around us." Thus says Pope Francis about our every increasing technology.

And it's true. At least I find it to be true that the more communication devices we have, the worse we are at communicating.  We have emails, text messages, and social media as well as printed paper, yet we still miss appointments, dates and meetings because now we have too many ways of looking for our appointed time and get lost in the woods of so many technology trees!

Instead of helping families be less busy and be able to spend more time together, technology sometimes complicates our lives. We are awash in phones, screens and monitors and don't have time to see our children or grandchildren grow!

Let's celebrate Joy and Hope by beginning this next year with a promise to put down the phones, computers, laptops and other devices and use our mouths and hearts to communicate with each other.  We cannot build up trust in our God when we cannot hear His Word in our hearts.

This winter we will talk about God sending his Smile to us.  Do you know what that was?  Stay tuned!

Joy and Hope

 

It was Sunday’s reading of St. Paul to the Philippians that got me.

 He wrote a letter while sitting in a dark dungeon awaiting his beheading. And yet, peace surrounded him and he was able to write a beautiful letter that described the peace he was praying for.

“Have no anxiety at all, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

Peace, how could St. Paul have peace at a time like that? Yet, because he had come to know not only God’s will, but His peace he was able to help his spiritual children before he would leave this earth. 

St. Paul did not have an easy time coming to that peace.  He was arresting Christians left and right, doing what he thought was the right thing.

But sometimes, doing what WE think is the right thing isn’t always what God wants us to do.

So God called Paul, and rather struck him down to get his attention and Paul finally listened.  He stopped being angry at Christians and realized God was calling him to be a follower of Christ.

This eventually led Paul to a spirit of Joy and Hope from which he was able to preach to his fellow Christians about God’s peace.

Sometimes, even when we think we are thinking the ‘right’ way or doing the ‘right’ thing, God insists we look at it in a different way.  This may make us uneasy and uncomfortable, but by listening to God instead of our own prejudices and ideas, by maintain an attitude of Joy and Hope we can let in God’s peace about everything going on in our lives. We can let go of the fear that is constantly overwhelming us.  We can have ‘no anxiety at all, but in everything make our requests known to God. And His peace will reside within us.

 

Placement Prayer

 Dear God,

Today help me just be where you want me to be, where I am most needed. Not where I think I am needed because I cannot be in all the places I think I am supposed to be. But YOU know where I can help someone the most this day.  So speak to my heart. I will let go and listen.  Thank you!

I Have Missed You

 I have missed you dear column. This year has been so tumultuous I will not even begin to describe it. Just know sometimes you have months and months of stress, anxiety and pain. You will live. I promise you.

With that said; when you think your trust in God is as great as it will ever get  (or you hope) there comes a time...or there may be several times..when God asks you to trust even more.  

You will not feel strong enough to to get through it. But I promise you will.

You will not want it.  But you will take it any way because you have no choice.

But that whole walking beside you in the sand thing? You know with one set of footsteps? It's is for real and they are not your footsteps. They are the Lord's.

The Lord has carried me. He continues to amaze me at how he knows just when to step in and relieve my pain, my sorrow and anxiety.  

He will send you miracles you keep asking for and create ones you never dreamed of.

I love you Lord. I know you love me.

Good gracious, this has been hard.

Do You Trust Me?

 Lent has begun and wow it is an exciting time. I say that with a big fat tongue in my cheek because as I write this post my husband and I are in the middle of purchasing a new house and selling our old one. You talk about trust.  We had to trust our realtor telling us we had to first sell our house before putting a contract on a different one.  That little voice inside me screaming, 'what if we don't find one to buy and now we don't have ours any more'.

So now we are down the road a couple weeks, sitting on two contracts, one to purchase a house and one to sell.  I could not begin to tell you how many emails, texts, e-documents we have had to sign during those two weeks and I am still packing boxes and worrying about how we move out and move in all on the same day with ten rooms of furniture and a garage.

God decided this Lent was going to be a workout for me. 

 

I am trying to go along with it at the moment. But frankly I have on more than one occasion stood with my hands on my hips and looked up and remarked, "Seriously? You are kidding right?"  And a little voice inside saying, "you trust me, don't you?"

That whole trust thing...you know where you put everything in God's hands and let go of it all.  Hint, you are supposed to let go of it ALL...that includes worrying about where you are going to park your car to sleep in the night between moving and getting keys for your new home....

Even that I can deal with, I have a large car and love my husband and spring is almost here so camping in the car may not be too bad.  (of course none of our kids would let us get away with that I know...)

But this constant going back and forth, changing documents, hoping you are not packing prematurely then worrying you should have begun packing weeks ago is messing with my body.  I already have gray hair, so now I am loosing hair from the stress instead.

And to add insult to worry, this is the time of year when my job at the parish ramps up into insanity with one diocesan event after another and because we are a cathedral parish we get hit with the whole load from February through March;  Diocesan Wedding Anniversary celebration including Mass and dinner for 200 hundred people,  Rite of Election for RCIA, another ceremony with dinner for 200 people, our parish Confirmation for 20 confirmation students and their sponsors including a whole day of recollection, dinner and Mass; Chrism Mass with distribution of holy oils to over 40 priests standing in line waiting for you to fill up tiny little jars of holy oil, box and hand them out, also includes a dinner, happy hour, Mass, and reception too, then let's not forget the big week of the year, Holy Week and all the services it includes.

Oh, and there is the trip to California my husband and I are taking because we booked that at Christmas to go see our daughter's new home.  That comes in the middle of all this insanity too.

When we put our home on the market last summer, we didn't have a nibble in over two months. Frustrated, we took it back off the  market. This winter we decided to try again thinking it would be almost summer before anything happened. Boy was that wrong. Within three days we had an offer and were desperately looking for a house to purchase.  Which just goes to show you, when you let God take charge of things, He really takes charge and you really have to go along with him.  That leap of faith is not a little hop, it is a full blown running leap into nothingness across a divide so tall and wide you cannot see the bottom or the other side. But God hasn't dropped us yet. And I know He won't. But boy, when says, "You trust me, don't you?"  It's not without a big gulp that I nod my head meekly and whisper, "Okay, you got this, Lord!"

Wonder and Awe in the Universe

 

One of the most telling ideas of our modern times was summed up perfectly by the character of Lord Kelvin in the 2004 movie Around the World in 80 days when he insulted Phineas Fogg's idea of his journey around the world by saying; " everything worth discovering has already been discovered and there is no need for further progress.   Of course Lord Kelvin didn't really say those exact words, he talked about a great many things concerning physics and space,  what he actually said was: “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.”

But the initial quote used in the movie typifies common thinking among people of science now in that we are an arrogant people, thinking we know as much as God. Or worse, we don't even acknowledge a Creator but explain things just 'happened' in our universe and plants and animals just came to be.

But how then do you explain how Big Bang got started if not by a creator of some sort.

According to an article by Ker Than on 12/9/2019 on Live Science.com " Initially, the universe was permeated only by energy. Some of this energy congealed into particles, which assembled into light atoms like hydrogen and helium. These atoms clumped first into galaxies, then stars, inside whose fiery furnaces all the other elements were forged.

This is the generally agreed-upon picture of our universe's origins as depicted by scientists. It is a powerful model that explains many of the things scientists see when they look up in the sky, such as the remarkable smoothness of space-time on large scales and the even distribution of galaxies on opposite sides of the universe

But there are things about this story that make some scientists uneasy. For starters, the idea that the universe underwent a period of rapid inflation early in its history cannot be directly tested, and it relies on the existence of a mysterious form of energy in the universe's beginning that has long since disappeared.

"Inflation is an extremely powerful theory, and yet we still have no idea what caused inflation or whether it is even the correct theory, although it works extremely well," said Eric Agol, an astrophysicist at the University of Washington."

Hmm… so in other words, scientists still don't know how the energy got started.  Nope they don't. But that doesn't keep us from trying to find out.

And that is all well and good until…well, it isn't. The problem with trying to push and probe ourselves in to figuring out everything and I mean, everything is it can take away from what we know.

What I mean is, if you base your faith on only what you know you are going to run into a dead end at some point because we cannot know everything. Sometime people lose their faith in God, in other people in life, because they cannot explain everything.  There are just things in life you cannot explain. Why we fall in love with a certain person and not another, why we cannot see the wind that we feel, why the universe is so huge we cannot measure it.   Lots of people get caught up trying to 'explain' these things and lose their perspective on life and other people.

Take it back to the story of Adam and Eve, which is a really good cautionary tale if you ask me. God created Adam, then He created Eve and told them they could enjoy everything in the garden except one little tree…   Now God wasn't throwing out a curve ball here to trip up the first human couple. He was just saying in this world He had created there were gong to be some things that were off limits because we are human, not God and simply will not be able to understand it.

But you know how we humans react when someone says, 'don't touch that button!'  Even when we know it's for our own good to leave something alone, some of us will do it anyway. And then we wonder what went wrong and why God didn't take care of us.

Accepting that we don't know everything, or may not be able to know everything is a grace.  And it's one to be prayed for. If you love 'knowing' things and it drives you to sin to know everything, maybe you could pray for the grace to accept not knowing everything.  I know people that spend lots of time trying to figure out the whys of something and it distracts them from the wonder and awe of just accepting.

You know how a child can look at a rainbow and just ooo and awe at it without asking how can it be? How can those colors be in the sky?  Why does it arch? Why is it only after a rain?  Sometimes we need to remember just the beauty and wonder of something without asking all the questions.  Just let ourselves marvel at the beauty of creation.

Awe and wonder of God's creation and of God Himself is a Gift of the Holy Spirit.  All of us who were baptized receive that gift and are boosted in it again when we are confirmed, but not all gifts come to the surface for us right away.   So praying for the development of your gift of wonder and awe would be a start to help you if you always want to touch the hot stove. Pray to enjoy creation with wonder and awe and by all means see the discoveries we have made in the world and space, but don't let Big Bang or inflation theories trip you up.  God also gives us the thirst for knowledge and that thirst is quenched when we include God in the equation. We can't leave Him out because He is the essential part of the equation.

 

Science + God = wonder, awe and beauty