Monday, November 17, 2014

Return to your early love ...



The readings from today's Mass touch me deeply.*

They were very important to me when I first returned to the Church.  They call out to me once again today.
But this I will call to mind;
therefore I will hope:
The Lord’s acts of mercy are not exhausted,
his compassion is not spent;
They are renewed each morning—
great is your faithfulness!
- Lamentations 3
The call to return to my early love - renewed - each day.

How free that was!  How engrossed I became with Jesus in the Eucharist, with his Sacred Heart - how fixated I became upon him crucified - his holy wounds, his heart, an open wound of love.  I wanted only him.  I didn't care who or what called out for me to stop my prayer: "Jesus!  Have pity on me!"  Like the blind man in today's Gospel - I want to see.  They could tell me to stop and they would even tell me to go away, and I would flee to the next tabernacle...

The world's slow stain.  St. Catherine of Genoa warned of that - 'the contagion of the world's slow stain' is what she feared the most.  That compromise we make with ourselves, our feelings, our desires ...  the desire to please, to fit in ... those voices are really telling us to be silent, to go away from the fountain of light and love.

Nothing, no one, no condition, no circumstance can keep us away from Christ...

What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. - Romans 8: 35-38




*Readings for today's Mass here.


Song for this post here.