Inflating my Christmas Hope

I admit it; Christmas has been going flat for me. As a small child there was, I suppose, glitz that even I managed to be excited about, and as an older child, there was plenty to weigh down my soul with sadness, and later I brimmed with cynicism as we approached the celebration of the birth of Christ. No one could do it right enough for me.

But all of that changed for me on Christmas Eve of 1991 when I went to a Midnight Mass with a guy I was very interested in, though I managed to be even more interested in finally taking the step of personally experiencing something of Catholicism with as open a heart as I was able to muster. 

I was two years out of college. My grandmother had just died, I was emotionally paralyzed over remaining unpursued by any romantic interest, I constantly whined to God about how He didn't love me, my employment was purely survival-driven, and in many ways I was still waiting for my life to start. I plodded through life but dreamed, rather despairingly, of possibly having a future with meaning. 

It all seemed perfectly normal and relatively stable at the time, but when I look back, I realize I was in a rather dark place. 

This morning at Mass I began to recall the importance of keeping my personal journey fresh in my mind. I've written about that Mass many times in this blog; here's a link to the full story. Suffice it to say here that God stepped into my history as with a trumpet, announcing that He had come to save me -- me, not mankind. He showed up. He called to me: Here I am! This electrifying encounter shook my life for decades. 

Just like a little baby showing up in a poopy stable, He burst upon the scene and changed everything forever.

(Oh my goodness, I just realized I am coming up on this being 30 years ago! How did I suddenly get so old?)

It really was like being born again, in the sense that a brand new life started for me that night, and I also had much to grow into. When God again burst into my life within the last decade or so, which ended up with me entering the Secular Carmelites, I learned that a Christmas Eve conversion is something I had in common with St. Therese. I learned how Carmelite-y Advent is. I learned that my call is to be the intercessor that invites the same grace of conversion I have received to be present to souls who, like me, searched without hope of finding, whined after love with a cold, closed, cynical heart, and doubted the value of my own creation. And I realize how it makes me weep when I encounter souls like I was! Oh dear God, I can't stand to witness that pain! It makes me feel so helpless, so powerless, so... desperate! I could wish I had a magic wand to take away this pain, but in this moment I realize I have something that is real, and powerful: I have my own history of God's action in my life. Don't forget, Marie.

The proof of the power of the love of God is now in me. It is my life. It is in my reality. It is in my faith. 

For whoever is begotten by God conquers the world. And the victory that conquers our world is our faith. 1 John 5:4

Faith is the realization of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1

Faith calls me, places me, into the community of believers. As a Carmelite, I know that my vocation is ecclesial; is of the Church and belongs to the Church. I also have long had the intuition that there were people of the Church praying for me -- I mean many more than the actually individuals who told me they were, or whom I experienced praying for me. Hidden people prayed for me. I know this.

And now I am one of the hidden people, and I pray for others. I have prayed for decades for the conversion of people's hearts. Some people "specialize" in praying for healing or praying long-term for those walking through difficult situations. My speciality has been to pray for the bottoms of people's hearts to open up to Love, and respond to Love's call to belong to Him. 

What I want most is to know that the people I love know and believe that God loves them, that they deeply respond to that love. This is my joy.

And I am going to keep on reminding myself that human pain is never the end of the story. Love is patient. The Lord Jesus Christ is powerful; He is present; He pursues our hearts and will never give up. Love is not desperate, nor whiny. Jesus is with us and is pursuing us for the long (or short) haul of our entire lives. His presence brings joy, life, peace, healing, truth, beauty. We have only to open to Him, and receive.

Doing Penance

 

Interior repentance is a radical reorientation of our whole life, a return, a conversion to God with all our heart, an end of sin, a turning away from evil, with repugnance toward the evil actions we have committed. At the same time it entails the desire and resolution to change one's life, with hope in God's mercy and trust in the help of his grace. This conversion of heart is accompanied by a salutary pain and sadness which the Fathers called animi cruciatus (affliction of spirit) and compunctio cordis (repentance of heart). Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1431

Why do penance? What benefit is there for a Christian to choose some act of mortification, of denying oneself of some good, of taking up some difficult or unpleasant work -- all this that we call penance? 

The Christian life is one of love. It starts in receiving God's love by faith, by knowing and believing in the love God has for us. Supernaturally, we are engrafted into Christ's own life of love in baptism, in confirmation, in receiving the Eucharist, in receiving cleansing in confession -- the whole sacramental life. 

Love, by its nature, is reciprocal. Love given to us draws love back out of ourselves, we return it, opening up an ongoing dialogue. God's love is infinite, and our souls are created for living in this infiinte love, but we ourselves are finite. Though we are given love, we leak. Though we are warmed by its perfection, we cool off. 

Love is an act of self-giving. When we love, we give ourselves to the one we love. God gives Himself to us and makes us able to give back to Him, giving us both the capacity and the love itself. 

Penance is like a stretch that helps us give more. It maintains the capacity God gave us and builds on it. It develops our human strength to love. With strength, we develop our capacity for more beautiful giving, more beautiful loving. And it isn't only about some aesthetic. It actually enables us to participate with God in extending His own love to other human beings, perhaps welcoming them in for the first time to this dialogue of love with God, perhaps helping them to become stronger. Perhaps keeping them literally warm and fed. Perhaps giving them courage. Could be any of the spiritual or corporal works of mercy.

If we don't physically exercise, eventually we start to lose our physical capacities. When we start to exercise, we extend them. The same might be said of penance. We can also observe that some ways of life have both physical and interior "penances" built in: manual laborers develop muscles, and those facing adversities might learn to choose great sacrifices. In both situations, we know that serious injury is also possible, so care and counsel are needed. Even the strongest human beings are fragile.

We must never attempt penance in order to deny we have a fragile nature, or because we are ashamed of ourselves. We must always start at square one, which is receiving God's love for and in our brokenness. It is best to start, then, with being still before God and allowing Him to love us. 

Just go and sit in front of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and allow Him to love you. Ask Him to make this love real to you from His Word. 

And let the exchange of love begin.