I despise it when I pray desperately for something and God ignores me. I know we're supposed to smile our holy smile and accept God's perfect will with great meekness and faith, but I always throw a tantrum when I feel like He's jerking me around like that. So I sympathize with Mary and Martha in in chapter eleven of the Gospel of John. Lazarus was sick, so they send for Jesus. What else would they do?
After the Scriptures carefully point out the closeness of His friendship with this little family, Jesus does the rudest thing. He ignores them for two days. He stays where He is without sending word and only finally reaches their house after Lazarus has been dead for four days.
Martha meets him on the road with what I know is a reluctant, but desperate accusation, yet with vestiges of faith clinging to it: "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you." Intertwined with suspicion, she lays out the irresistible gauntlet, faith.
I bet it was painful for Him to hold back what He was about to do, what He was going to show her, what He was about to work. I bet the face of His mercy was pressed against the veil of His flesh, straining for release. Yet slowly, deliberately, He takes the time to lead her out of the shadows of death and into the breathtaking Reality. Jesus knows that Martha is living in the past, and she must move beyond that, allow Him to heal it, or she cannot move forward. We know this because He directs her to the present, laying the sentence softly before her, "Your brother will rise again."
"I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day," she says. Faithfully willing to be led out of the past, she nevertheless switches to a contemplation of the future, when it will finally be okay. She understood the greatness of resurrection, but not for herself. Not now. Could she have guessed the purpose He had in mind for her from the foundation of the world, the purpose about to break in on all of them in a handful of moments more?
He painstakingly redirects her attention again, for her purpose is not in the future. To experience what is about to happen, imminent glory, she must be where Jesus is, in the eternal Now:
"I am [right now] the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?" (Jn. 11:26).
Do YOU believe this? Something of you died, back there in your past, and you wrapped it carefully in preservatives and grave clothes and hid it away behind a stone in your heart. If Jesus had been there it would not have happened. He let it, dear one. He let it happen for this moment. He yearns to show you what He can do with it. Do you believe He can resurrect it so that it will never die again? Do you believe this, most precious one?
No, listen to me. Do not look to the future, when "things will be better." It cannot be better if it is still dead. It will never be better, then, unless you answer Him now. He is I AM. The resurrection is now. The life is right now. If you believe, with Martha and Mary, that He is the Christ, the Son of God come into the world for such, you must remove the stone, open the grave, and allow Him to call it forward in all its deadly odor and trappings. You cannot Live otherwise.
A grueling lesson, surely, but I have learned to wait silently in the midst of my deepest pain, because I have seen with Martha and Mary, that when the whole thing shakes out, the ignorance, childishness, and lack of faith with which I accuse Him to His face will ultimately shame me for its pride when the divine love is revealed under the trappings of requiem. He only does wondrous things, the psalmist says. “Do you believe this?”
What I know now, is that whatever suffering I go through, however late, dark, silent and absent He seems, there is intention in what He allows, and it is necessary for a shrouded end. If I can brave the pain, I will see Him weeping there beside me, waiting to call something miraculous and beautiful to life at my “yes.” When the “Come forth” has been uttered from the lips of I AM, we must cling in faith till the grave is fully emptied, be patient with the removal of the wrappings, and the unsteady coming forth of life. If we can do this, we will surely see something unheard of and unspeakable.
7.30.2009
The Now
Posts
23 comments:
Wonderful post! At first I started to read it and was thinking to myself, "I hate it when my kids have temper tantrums". lol
I usually ignore them until they have calmed down enough to explain why I do and say what I do.
I am thinking perhaps God is the same way with us children.
Beautiful!
Yes, that is my experience too. It is only after the raw emotion has time to rest a little that I ever hear from God. Thank you, Linda!
PtS, the Holy Spirit is speaking through you, and you have many that need to hear what you hear on the summit... what you just said in this writing. I don't know whether to ask if "The Now" was written with the discussion of the unborn in mind. If not, then you should see how I am reading "The Now." Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful... and they shall renew the face of the earth!
Oops. Darn. Forgot... last post was Len
Actually, after our conversations, I have thought about it differently and had it on my mind quite a bit. I wasn't being intentionally specific, but the "wind blows where it may"...Should you share "The Now" with someone?
I pursue the summit as hard as I can, Len, and hope to take a few dear souls with me. Thank you for the encouragement. Please pray for me?
PtS, You have know idea the timing of "The Now!" And the context! Too much to describe here. Just pray that I have the wisdom not to interfere with the message of The Now... and the power it could have to bring about a metanoia. We sow seeds, indeed, with our words, and they grow by faith and the life-giving waters from above.
Amen and amen.
When the monster strikes at loved ones, it's then that the battle gets personal. I have a partially begun blog that no one really knows about. http://crushingtheserpentshead.blogspot.com/ There's a poem (Late Friday night cries) written for a prolife friend who is more devoted than I when it comes to being at the clinics. Also, some meditations for the Mysteries of the Rosary for the Unborn. Still working on the Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries. But something I wrote last winter/spring might explain better my "Way of the Unborn", called "Standing Watch Until the Dawn". But even that is incomplete in that it only speaks of one. There is another... but shhhhh.... the big secret.... no one is to know.... for these are "private decisions"....though the consequences are so very public. So we must pray for ALL our sisters, and all their secrets (how many are there altogether?), and all their pain. Until the Dawn, we pray. For now, "The Now", and the hope that they know, as you put it, that "it cannot be better if it is still dead." (Please take them both to the summit for me if you could. For you and others they may be light, but for me... I think I have carried them as far as I can). Thank you.
It has been entrusted to you, dear one. But we can pray, yes... and be present with those who hurt, taking their pain to Jesus, entering into it with them. I pray for your loved one.
Take their pain to Jesus.... that's it in a nutshell, isn't it? Give it to Him, and let Him take it to the Cross. What a passion He lets us live! And double the pain for us who see Him as a Friend. That we have to add more pain his Pain... that is the hard part, since I know what I can carry, and I see the weaknesses in me that prevent me from carrying more, and so the pain of having to hand it over to Him. It forces the soul to suffer more for Him, and learn how. That growing is what hurts. But that pain can be overlooked when we turn to others and see the pain in them. The woman whose child has gone missing... I can imagine that pain. I give that to Him, and He takes it to the Cross. He dies, and that pain is brought with Him into the tomb where--somehow during the three days--He buries all suffering far far below in some nether world. Then! Then, is it some odd ironic rhyme, the place He comes out of? That tomb where the Seed of the Father is planted is where we must leave all scarred wombs... the millions and millions of them, and the one or two we know of.... Sunday... something to bring to the altar today at noon Mass... and anything you, sisters, might need placed there. Glad to do so as a brother. Call me Lazarus ;)
Dumb Lazarus! "can't imagine their pain..." Lazarus needs to read over BEFORE posting!
Len, Your passion is apparent, and I find it compelling. I don't think I understand what you're asking me to do, however. I keep telling you I am a doofus, and need it on the bottom shelf. Could you state it plainly?
I do not feel as though you are hijacking the blog. Whatever my writing stirs in another is the Holy Spirit's work, which I pray to cooperate with.
If I can help, I want to. Please use this forum, as I think it would be beneficial for all. Post your blog name and we can go from there. PtS
PtS, will do. The only problem with this forum is that you're so prolific! And every piece you put out there seems to touch on something that is related to my topic. My wife says that I'm nuts (she knows it, but does she have to say it all the time!:) in that I've link "it" with all the ills of our day. It's not become an obsession--just the telescope through which our culture can be viewed. The telescope magnifies the problems in that culture. Problem is (for me) it's SO large that it almost doesn't fit in the circle anymore. Isn't there a scene from Shrek (I think... could be a different movie) where they're walking along and come upon something they stumble over. As they bend over to look at it, they realize they're walking on the back of the dragon. In other words, it's so large they can't see the whole of it. The main thing to remember, however, is that even though Leviathan is huge, our Lord and His strength and His mercy are even greater. I guess if I were to ever write a book, it would an answer to the question "what do you see?" That's where we are all at, and all of us are just starting to see. For me, it's the Cross I've been looking for--we're all looking for the Cross, aren't we? Only by looking at it--staring at the "Now" upon the cross--can we see "big picture" of where we fit into His Plan. That plan has to include "others." It can't just remain with "self." We climb Carmel so we can share what we've seen with those below. To begin, we first have to understand how much we are like Peter in what we allow to be done unto Him. We run away and deny that these little ones (or our Lord... interchange them if you can) have no one to speak for them and are carried off each day "en masse." Something not-right in us must be whispering to us that they unborn are somehow not all that important right now. So make a mental swap--imagine instead of them being the 3 to 4 thousand unseen fetuses each day, that they are... across the country... a hundred classrooms filled with 30 to 40 kindergartners... each day attacked by terrorists... each day their parents having to deal with the losses... each day the news reports... each day the call for retribution... each day the uniting that takes place among the grieving survivors... the turning to God in the churches and synagogues.... Imagine that, then, occurring every day, non-stop, with no power to stop it, and now what? 36 years!!! The "news" that wants to come out is staggering. And the huddled grieving that wants to happen is enormous! Yet it can't... doesn't... just mentioned or thought of in passing as a political problem to be fought out in Washington. Should we make to our heavenly home some day, I pray that God allows us all the first 1000 years to wait on them and meet them all, and tend to their desires, an apologize for not thinking they could have had a chance on earth to get to know Him first by the butterflies and flowers and clouds and mountains and all that He made for us creatures who love to discover Creators through the beauty of the created. When our Lord comes again in glory, I told my wife, I wouldn't doubt it if He first appeared in the sky in the shape of a forming babe. People would think it was a cloud at first. Then the shape of "the cloud" would move and grow, and soon it would look exactly like a baby. By then most of us would be on our knees (I would hope) as His coming unfolded before our eyes and in ten minutes time we would see Him in all the glory that we missed when He was little. It works for my wife now. She looks at clouds differently than when we first met! .... thanks for letting me share... Len
I took a look at your blog. It is beautiful. Why haven't you kept up with it? This is what I meant by "it was entrusted to you." My message is what I have seen, ascending. Yours must be what you have seen, ascending. Research how to get your blog read. Start posting your heart, every day. You must stay with it. You must write. If you are their voice, (one of them)and you aren't speaking, then what?
As True as I know your message is, I have to be obedient to what God has called me to do here. You must too.
I thank you for sharing your heart, because I have not been so wonderfully evangelized...ever! I promise, I am paying attention in ways I never have before. You must do the same for others. If God has called you to this, he will bring traffic to your forum (as long as you do your part!)
Get busy!
"I thank God for you..."
This is lovely, as usual. The whole story of sin can be boiled down to our blaming God for our failures. What we don't see so well is that we also find Him guilty and crucify Him to ourselves. He did that for us once; He won't do it again. The only death is our own. Your meditations send me to my knees every time.
Bill
Bill, No better place for us to be, and that is exactly how I felt when I wrote it. I could barely type I trembled so, both in memory of the many times I have found Him guilty, and the glory of the Love revealed. Bless you.
On a somewhat lighter note...I figured out why Sacred Scripture is unfolding for me!!! It dawned on me the other night. The Catholic high school I went to had an "all class" reunion. We were talking about the yearbook class, and the work a few of us did to make the yearbooks happen. It was back before any publishing software... heck... back before even the Apple computers. I remember sitting at the kitchen table late at night "cropping" pictures with the cropping tool and a grease pencil. I remember figuring out that it was quicker for me to work out the ratio of the size of the box I wanted to put the photo in... for me it was faster than the cropper. If I had a box that was, say, 10 picas wide by 35 picas high, and I had a photo with an image that was more vertical than horizontal, then I'd find the best width of the image, then figure out how tall to make it. If the image was, say, 6 picas, then I'd get my calculator out and cross multiply. In my head (and I did this all night long) I'd say "10 is to 35 as 6 is to what?" I'd scribble down the two fractions, with 10 over 35 and 6 over X. I'd quickly solve for X, and I had my height. So.... how does that relate to anything here.... well, PtS... I read your "Bread of the Presence" tonight at C.O., and it happened again... a connection: "two stacks of six loaves is to the Old Testament sanctuary as one-Tree-of-Life-on-two-sides-of-a-river-producing-12 fruits-a-year is to the Book of Revelation's central location of the New Jerusalem." I was blessed once to have Dr. Peter Kreeft as a professor once, and he was fond of using analogies, saying that is how God spoke to us. How true it is. Without analogies, our minds would explode with complete here and now Revelation, so He uses much smaller images to point us the bigger images we will one day see. Just something on my mind... thought I'd share it. Thanks, Len
Fabulous! Don't you love that? There used to be a TV show on called "Joan of Arcadia." If you could ever get past that she was always so sarcastic to God (which made me angry and a little creeped out) the analogies and pictures "God" used to speak to her were very interesting for their realism. It was fun to watch someone else struggle with stuff they way I do, always trying to understand what this means!!, and I watched it all the time. Very cool, Len. Now, how about that blog?
Okay the blog... but I've been blessed with a breeze, the Holy Spirit, no doubt, blowing where it will and where I happen to be. It regards the book, and so the blog can be on pause a bit longer. I think I've stumbled upon a "voice" that works! I hate to jinx it by talking about it. In the past, I've started down a road, even peeled off 20 or 30 pages, then shared the writing with friends--only to discover that they were not hearing the writer's voice that I hoped they would hear. This latest attempt... well, let's just say, continued prayers please!! But I'd like to share something that came to me the other night when reading the Gospel of John... in a moment of the "Now". The telling of the miracle of the wine at the Cana wedding feast. See if you follow... Our Lady is present. She says they have run out of wine. This is a wedding banquet, remember, so Her speaking to Her Son takes place in an event that foreshadows the Wedding Feast for which He came to earth, since (as John the Baptist puts it) He is the Bridegroom. Okay, so we're at a wedding, and Our Lady is there, and the people thirst for something of this world--otherwise, why the request as spoken in the simple informative statement "They have no wine." Here comes Jesus' first public miracle, or manifestion of His power (mind you in the first Chapter, he identifies Nathaniel, but that is a spoken miracle... at least to Nathaniel, and not a transformative miracle of nature). And what is this miracle? (oh my gosh, there is so much here to fathom!!!) He takes A LOT of water... 6 big containers each holding about 20 to 30 gallons of wine. That is a ton of wine! It doesn't say how big the wedding is, but I have been to some pretty big weddings, and I have NEVER seen people plan on drinking 120 to 180 gallons of wine! So why the excess? To foreshadow the "abundance" or the "ever flowing" of God's grace. Now this is His first miracle... a taking of empty jars, filling them with water and turning the water into the finest wine. Now (and here's where it gets amazing!) jump to John's telling of the crucifixion. John 19:28-30!!! The final act of His public ministry. Someone makes contact with Him via a stick... with common wine, it says, and only just a little taste of it for Him, to be sucked off a sponge... then the next "contact" with Him is also via a stick (remember the putting in and the pouring out at the wedding miracle?), but here in the form of a spear, and what has He done with the wine, the last thing put "into the vessel?!" It enters Him (John is the only one, I think, who actually says He "took the wine"). The last thing poured out from Him... or given back to us in return... the last of His blood and water!!! And who is there, with Him til the end as She was at the beginning, watching all this? Back to the wedding... it makes you wonder what Jesus heard when his Mother said to the servers "Do whatever he tells you". He must have heard Her speaking to Himself, and the He was the Father, and the "whatever He tells you" is a Mother's call to Jesus to obey the Father to help humanity!!! Amazing...
PtS, think the water into wine and wine back into water could be cleaned up and worth sending to Deacon K? Let me know, if you would. We shall defer to the Biblical "expert" here... you! I'm sure there is already a commentary somewhere that says what came to me the other night.
I think you will be ok sending this to Deacon (he's the expert) if you are sure to articulate the traditional interpretation of the Cana miracle first: that the water in the wedding water pots, gallons and gallons of it, was Jewish ritual cleansing water. You got the abundance allusion, but for Him to change the water into wine was saying that the wine of the new covenant cannot be put into the old wineskin-waterpots of Judaism. It began as water, but then became something much, much more. If you then change the new covenant wine back into water, what is that saying? I do not remember such in the commentaries, but that is not to say it is not there. The water flowing from the side of Jesus is traditionally held to be baptismal water mingled with the new covenant wine-blood. Yes, He did it in obedience to God through His mother, Our Lady.
PtS,
My sincerest gratitude to you for this beautiful post. Just this week, work at my company has dried up to the point where I was laid off...tomorrow is my last day.
The final paragraph of your post filled me with such hope and joy...almost brought me to tears right here in the office.
Thank you again! God Bless.
Dave
Dave, Please know I do not offer platitudes when I say how awful! I too was laid off last November (just in time for Christmas) and have not worked since. I was the Religious Ed Director for our parish, which I loved, but now I can see clearly God's purpose for it and it is wonderful. We've been married 16 years and have never been this tight, but I can say some miraculous things have been happening. Despite enormous hospital bills incurred just before my lay off, we are debt free as of last week, all on one half-paycheck (my husband's hours were also cut significantly last year). I promise you will make it, and you won't believe how wonderfully if you can keep from complaining (read Graves of the Craving), although admittedly that is very hard! Know that I am praying for you. Stay in the daily readings!!Bless you Dave.
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