Year of Healing

The year isn't over with yet, I know. But I have been reflecting on the healing that has come to my life in 2017. It's been a year of surprises: both of the "Wow! I didn't expect that to happen" sort, and of the sort that is more like a realization of something I hadn't known that I hadn't known before.

All of these have involved relationships changing.

But the greatest fruit, the thing that got me reflecting on this, is the great increase of peace I've known. I've written in the past about how much pressure I have habitually put myself under, forcing myself to do things that I found difficult but necessary. There is good in being able to choose to do the hard thing, but there is a problem with habitual self-violence. The chief problem is why it originates, and for me it was due to relational isolation. To put it more plainly, I mourned that I had no one to help me, no one to mentor me, no one to disciple me, no one to teach me. No one to follow. I didn't know how to enter into that kind of relationship, or look for it, or ask for it. So I did what kids do who are left, in their play, to be bosses of themselves -- I was mercilessly hard on myself.

Then, my internal reward system was set up around how well I responded to merciless hardness. If I felt like I had busted my spiritual/mental/physical/relational butt, then I deserved some kind of applause, and I took whatever good was at hand as fitting payment, thank you very much. If I hadn't pushed enough, I was subpar, and had to go at it harder. Good things were not allowed to register interiorly, much.

Any system like this that we ourselves set up fails. We end up miserable, burnt out, resentful, prideful, self-loathing, etc. But it can get to be like a treadmill that we just can't step off of. Also, because it supports and is supported by the flesh, stuff hides in the darkness, and to some degree we perpetuate sin or our pet brokenness to which we become attached like an old comfort.

God in His grace threw some wrenches in my dance of self-violence of this sort. It started with needing to face and own truth, and then speak it. I thought it would kill me, but instead it dismantled some machinery I had going in me. It astonished me for some months. It is hard to explain, but it was like having some kind of fear of death and this habitual self-violence broken off of me. It was a work of God. Deo Gratias.

I have learned to enjoy my life and God's blessings. Gone (or going) are the feelings that if I rest and delight, if I let go of my whip to drive myself on, that I am failing in holiness, that I am failing as a person. The hardness has softened. In delight I find that God is present to me by His grace, and whether I feel great about my efforts and or I don't, His love and truth don't change. His love is far more fascinating to look at than my strained interior "muscles." And that which He feeds me by His love is so incredibly more nourishing than what I dig up by vigorously grubbing for love. And I don't have to waste energy in false expectation of return from sources of the flesh that just can't make the return that His love can.

I do have someone to follow. Concretely, it is the Carmelite saints, but ultimately it is the Lord Jesus, because He had to teach me, painstakingly, to trust Him before He could show me my Carmelite vocation. And it is never not by faith that we walk. So it isn't "clear," except to the eyes of faith. It requires practice to walk by faith, to learn to recognize God's leading, to know what to take seriously and when to just walk and trust like a child, knowing that the desires that fill my heart with yearning, will still need parsing between the Beautiful and Holy that are their cause, and the stuff that gets picked up in my flesh in the interpretation and/or expression of these desires. God can handle it. He is the one I live to please, not myself. So if I have uncertainty in my own mind, but give it to Him, then I can accept not knowing stuff all at once. I can be at peace in the work He is doing.

This has actually been a really great year. No, life isn't suddenly perfect of course, but if the fruit of the Spirit is peace, I am living more deeply in the Holy Spirit than I have been in the past. That can happen regardless of imperfection level. I am deeply grateful for this. God has such good ideas.

Patron Saint of 2018: St. Catherine of Bologna

It's the most wonderful time of the year.... Advent! Or, rather, it will begin liturgically in just over an hour, from where I sit.

So I have randomly generated my patron saint of the next liturgical year just now. I look forward to this little ritual every year. I know that every saint reflects the glory of God in a unique way, and I always ask the Lord that I may glean something needed from the one generated to be my patron for the next year. I have always found timely help this way, even though I didn't necessarily understand what my forthcoming needs of the year would be as each Advent began.

This year my saint is St. Catherine of Bologna. She was a Franciscan tertiary who went on to found two convents of Poor Claires, and lived in the 15th century. Interestingly, she died at age 50, which age I currently am. She also wrote a work called The Seven Spiritual Weapons. She was an artist and a poet in addition to being a foundress and an abbess. She is the patroness of artists, of the liberal arts, of the city of Bologna, and against temptations. Her body is incorrupt, and her corpse is seated on a gold throne. Frankly, she doesn't look so great any more. I opted for an artistic rendering rather than a photo of her body to memorialize her on this blog. I rather like the sort of cartoonish effect of her oversized head and tiny body.

St. Catherine, pray for me!