Convince Us Lord

You wouldn't know to look at me
There's tiny scars that you can't see
It was a struggle to survive
I'm probably lucky I'm alive
- "It Only Hurts Me When I Cry" by Dwight Yoakam

I was reading in Miracle Hour, A Method of Prayer that Will Change Your Life, that the primary effect of the release of the Holy Spirit, "is a tangible experience of the love of Jesus."

How real, how perfectly human, but how magnificently divine is the love of Jesus!

You can experience true Christian joy, rooted in the unchanging love of Jesus for you personally!

What prevents me, what prevents you from internalizing the reality that God loved us right into existence? 

What prevents me, what prevents you from accepting the awesome reality that there is nothing you or I could do or not do to increase or decrease the love Jesus has for us?

His love is constant!  His mercy surpassing all of our weakness!  Even if we block his forgiveness and mercy by hardening our hearts and not forgiving or showing mercy to others, still his love for us is constant!

I have read about those who have been so wounded, so often, or so deeply, often by those that they trusted their heart to, or by one to whom they had been entrusted . . . a father, step-father, a mother, an older brother, an uncle, a husband or a wife, that they are left broken and have such a hard time accepting the immensity and beauty of Jesus loving us, and longing for us to ask to feel his embrace.

For me there has been a false piety or reverence that has interfered with the acceptance that it is Jesus's joy, his pleasure, his delight to condescend to be my friend.  I can desire his friendship, his love, desire to please him above all others, because it delights him for me to do so.  I don't have to put him on a pedestal above the tabernacle.  I can admire and adore Jesus's beauty . . . in adoring him in the Blessed Sacrament, in adoring and imagining the beauty and glory he possesses and emanates in heaven.   I can also talk with him and love him, offering everything he has given me, all that he has created, and ask his grace to know and love him as a friend.

Your greatness, Lord, humbles us.  Your surrender to the will of the Father in the incarnation, in your ministry, in your Passion and death, and in the eternal longing in your heart for us to seek you and love you and others because of our love for you, because you are in them.  This humbles us and compels us.

Come after us Lord.  Convince us of your love.

Mother Mary, Mother of God,  Mediatrix of all Grace,

Please pray for those reading this today and those that they are thinking about, that they hold in their hearts.  

Please dispense the graces that they would need to be convinced of Jesus's healing and exquisite love for them.  

Please dispense the graces that they would surrender their brokenness, their woundedness, their doubts, their sense that they cannot trust, even if they believe and love, that they can't trust in his love.

Please give them the grace to be convinced.

Ask the Holy Spirit to be given to them that they would have a tangible experience of the love of Jesus.

Please ask Mary and release for them the graces to grow in the knowledge and appreciation of the constant love of Jesus for them.  

Convince them, through the Holy Spirit, that there is nothing they can do ever to decrease or increase the love that Jesus has for each of us

The love the Father had for us when he created us to know, love, and serve him

The love the Holy Spirit has when he comes and is poured out upon us, transforming our hearts to be more like the heart of our Lord Jesus.

Be Near us O Lord!

Be near the broken, the wounded, the ones whose pain, or sins, or habitual indulgence in distractions or addictions have blinded them to the reality of your love, your power, and your peace.

Please Lord, make all things new.  Begin again with us, and please also with those you have orchestrated into our lives.

In Jesus Name, Amen

Throwing Off Self-Sufficiency

Do you believe Jesus healed the blind, the lame, that he cast demons out of those who were possessed, or do you believe these are Gospel stories and are part of the genre of mythology the same as Homer's Odyssey?
Of course if you are reading this blog you most likely do believe those as eye witness accounts to what occurred when Jesus was on earth during his three year ministry before his sacrifice that opened the gates of heaven, and gave us the hope of eternal communion with God.

Peter Kreeft in You Can Understand The Bible: A Practical And Illuminating Guide To Each Book In The Bible explains that writing off the Gospel miracle stories as myth is not a valid way of interpretting the Gospel accounts.  The evangelists were writing to pass on what they had seen.  They were not writing as Homer was, a work of mythology.  The choice is to believe they were writing what they saw, and heard, or to believe that they are liars.

It is hard to go the liar option because then you have to think why would these men leave their way of life to preach a faith that was in opposition to the state Religion and would bring them, all their loved ones, and all those that believed into criminal status with the Roman government.  If you ever get a chance to listen or read about the persecutions of the early Christians, it tends to reinforce, and clarify why martyr is another word for witness.

This has been a week where my faith has been challenged, but also affirmed.  Prior to visiting the Blessed Sacrament yesterday I was driving in my car feeling like crying, but not able to.  Instead I was just kind of groaning.

In Mark 10:46-52, we read about Bartimaeus calling out to Jesus, who he somehow knows and proclaims as the Messiah, when he calls out "Son of David, have pity on me."

Jesus does have pity on him.  He wants his disciples to bring Bartimaeus to him.  It says that Bartimaeus threw off his cloak, jumped up, and went to Jesus.

Fr. John Bartunek in the The Better Part had some good food for mediation on what might seem a straightforward healing of a blind man.

• Persistent prayer has its reward.  
• Bartimaeus is blind with his sight, but not with the eyes of his heart has belief that Jesus is the Messiah, and more important for his near-term suffering, that Jesus will have compassion on him if he asks him
  
  Do we remember this at all times?  Fr. Bartunek reminds us, "The heart of Christ is open to all and full of compassion."

• "When we trust in God, we detect his presence, power, and love; when we trust ourselves, he often seems far away."
  
  That resonates with you doesn't it?  After I return from spending time with the Blessed Sacrament when I am upset, I wonder why didn't I just go there sooner?  Jesus is the Divine Physician so I guess it would not be lying if I sneak out of work and call it a doctor appointment.  I know he is here with me always, but darn if my own defenses while praying alone are too weak for me to receive what Christ is so ready to give.
• Fr. Bartunek mentions that the Fathers of the Church wrote that the cloak that Bartimaeus threw is a symbol of self-sufficiency.  I did some googling to try to find the specific Church Father who said this.  If someone finds the primary reference, please leave it in the comments and I'll send you a prize as a token of my appreciation, provided you have an email as part of your profile.  While looking for the reference I found greater than 10 non-Catholic Christian blogs that also mentioned this, but didn't give any credit to Church Fathers specifically or generally.  I thought that was cool in a way--either if they might have come to it on their own through the counsel of the same Holy Spirit that inspired the Church Fathers, or if the teaching from before the Reformation has carried over into their scripture exegisis, despite it being part of "Tradition".
• The cloak, which was protection against the rapid and frequent temperature changes in the Palestine climate, also doubled as a blanket at night, "a symbol of self-sufficiency, of those things in our lives that we depend on - things that can hold us back when we hear God calling."
• When he left the cloak behind, Bartimaeus becomes an example of the faith that leaves that self-sufficiency behind, confidently trusting in the compassion of Jesus Christ.
• "(Bartimaeus) couldn't see the warmth and gentleness and sincerity of Christ's eyes, so the Lord chose to communicate those things with his voice."
  I wonder if there wasn't something even stronger than the audible voice touching Bartimaeus.  I wonder if it was Jesus's heart and divine power reaching out and touching Bartimaeus's heart.
• "Bartmaeus knew immediately that Jesus cared, that Jesus wanted to listen, to help.  The brief exchange draws these two hearts together . . . the beggar is . . . given a chance to bare his deepest longings to the Lord. . . . (T)he Lord welcomes them, takes them into his own soul, and grants them."
  
  I don't think this was just the blindness.  Bartimaeus was a beggar, without the dignity that comes from providing for oneself.  Unlike the paralytic, we don't hear mention of friends or family with him.  He is coming to the Lord alone.  The loneliness is probably something else that Jesus heals.  After the healing, Jesus doesn't send him away.  He lets him follow him down the road.

Bartimaeus was already free of the delusion I sometimes have that I can turn inward, maybe journal a bit, and heal myself.  I can't.  I need my Savior, I need the Father, I need the Holy Spirit that He has given me.  I also need the Holy Eucharist.  Just as Christ's physical presence was necessary for Bartimaeus's healing, I find it necessary for my inner healing, and I found that as recently as yesterday.

It is a wonderful gift to be able to surrender to Christ's love.

God is Love and God Loves Me

"In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins." (1 John 4:10)

"God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." (Romans 5:5)

It is Sunday and as Sunday is the beginning of a new week, and the first day of the rest of our lives, thought it would be good to post on the most foundational truth we need to absorb, and believe with all of our hearts.

Christopher O'Donnell, in Life In The Spirit and Mary wrote:

The fundamental truth of God's personal love for each one of us is a necessary foundation for any spiritual growth whether a person is enmeshed in sin or growing in higher states of prayer, it will be a necessary support for advancement.

"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father . . . " (James 1:17a)

We know this is true that all the gifts we have, from existence, free will, our families, the gift of faith, hope, and also even the obstacles to faith and hope are gifts coming down from the Father.  The obstacles aren't always what we would call good and perfect, but they too are gifts.

Sometimes we are dealt a blow, and usually it is a series of blows in life that clouds us to the most beautiful of all realities, God is Love, and God Loves Me.

Today, hear God telling you, "I love you, (insert your name here).  You know this is true, but do you really understand it?  Ask me to help you understand it."

Pope Benedict XVI wrote two of the most beautiful paragraphs in print on this most essential truth of our existence, our past, our present, and our future in the Introduction to his Encyclical Deus Caritas Est (God is Love):

“God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 Jn 4:16). These words from the First Letter of John express with remarkable clarity the heart of the Christian faith: the Christian image of God and the resulting image of mankind and its destiny. In the same verse, Saint John also offers a kind of summary of the Christian life: “We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us”.

We have come to believe in God's love: in these words the Christian can express the fundamental decision of his life. Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. Saint John's Gospel describes that event in these words: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should ... have eternal life” (3:16). In acknowledging the centrality of love, Christian faith has retained the core of Israel's faith, while at the same time giving it new depth and breadth. The pious Jew prayed daily the words of the Book of Deuteronomy which expressed the heart of his existence: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your might” (6:4-5). Jesus united into a single precept this commandment of love for God and the commandment of love for neighbor found in the Book of Leviticus: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (19:18; cf. Mk 12:29-31). Since God has first loved us (cf. 1 Jn 4:10), love is now no longer a mere “command”; it is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us.

If I really believe and rejoice in this personal love of God for me, it is motivating.  I want to show God's love, God's goodness, Christ's meekness and strength to those connected to my life.  

We who have been grasped by the love of God in the person of Christ Jesus, Our King, want to respond by cooperating with the grace and work of the Holy Spirit in us to draw others to Him.

How has the truth that God is Love and God loves You been the starting point for a new life in the Holy Spirit, where you are filled with joy to say, "Jesus is Lord"?

If you don't yet have that joy in your heart, and you can't seem to believe in this truth, what is in your way?

When Jesus taught the crowds, and when he talked to individuals we read how his teaching and his presence makes a deep impression on them.  Many times crowds forgot about the essentials of food to stay and hear him teach.  We read about some cutting a hole through the roof of where he was so they could get their paralyzed friend to him to be healed.  Miraculous conversions occurred, like we hear in the conversion of Zacchaeus.  The Gospels are filled with people either coming to Jesus or him coming to them, for example the woman at the well, and they are not the same afterwards.

Fr. Bartunek had a great take on this:

"Whether we realize it or not, in our hearts we yearn for God, and so when we come into contact with someone close to God, our hearts are moved.  When the crowds came into contact with Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, their hearts burst with astonished joy."

Part of that explains why it is so easy to love Mary!  She is so close to God, our hearts are moved!  It is also why I can read some of your blog posts and comments and my heart is moved.  You are writing out of hearts that are filled with God, and in response to the love you have been shown.

For those of you that rejoice that God is love and God loves you personally, I hope you will be encouraged in your calling to continue spreading that love and your gift of faith in all the ways God provides you the opportunity.

For those who want to believe, consider that if you are looking to be reassured of God's love, it is really in response to him reaching out to you.  Also please consider that not once in the Gospels was there a person that turned to Jesus, that he did not help.

Jesus always wills to HEAL us.  Some of us may need physical cures, or want physical cures for others.  This may or may not be willed.  This isn't always easy, and is sometimes upsetting.  We want to yell out, "Hey Jesus, you healed the blind men, the paralytic, the leper, the mother-in-law, why not me?  You raised several people from the dead, why not this person?  You love them too, right?"

I am not God, and I am not adequate to answer questions like that in a satisfying way.  I do believe with everything in me that a) God does love you in a more profound, and infinitely wonderful way than you will be able in this life to comprehend, b) I am confident that if you turn to Jesus and ask him, Jesus will heal you on the inside--in your heart and in your mind.  The key thing is to acknowledge your need for him, and come to him in confidence and humility, and then I am confident he will heal you.

If you want to read more about why you can be confident in God's Care of you, please look here.