One Day You Shall Laugh

Listening at today's Mass was a completely different experience than it was when I wrote about this on Sunday, March 20. Today was an experience, not of searching for the gaze, but of feeling myself held in the center of God's heart with his presence all around me. Every element of the Mass seemed to speak from previous years' journeying with the Lord. I was in an ocean of gratitude. 

Father asked the rhetorical question, "What would it be like for you if Jesus had not come?" And honestly, thinking about it, I had to restrain myself from energetic crying. The encounter with Christ in my life that was speaking to me so profoundly -- where would I be if I were still where I was in my faith journey at, say, age 15. I could easily see myself mixed up with courses of life involving highly illegal and addictive paths. 

During communion we sang "Be Not Afraid," which, when I was in Japan, I sang almost every time I prayed night prayer with the Sisters at their house after our weekly shared dinner. Consider, we sang this song because it was in English, and I was there. When we came to the words, "blessed are you who weep and mourn, for one day you shall laugh," I almost always started to cry and couldn't continue. I just had so much pain right on the surface of my heart in those days that it whapped me silly, every time. 

But what I saw and heard today was a promise fulfilled that God spoke to me years and years ago, when He first called me to become a Catholic, but hadn't entered the Church yet. It was, "I want the glorious to become commonplace in your life." And, by the grace of God, it has. I have walked through some very frightening darkness, times that my soul felt completely shredded, but I can now look back and see God has never been the source of my pain. He has been the source of my healing, but it has not been without spiritual surgical procedures to free me from clutching death and destruction. He absolutely desires glory for His children and bestows it. When he tells us, give, and it shall be given unto you, I think what He desires we give him is everything of our brokenness, held open, frankly, before our mutual gazes. Not in a way that we pursue crushing our own selves, as if for his attention. But owning it, surrendering it to His lordship, and trusting him to see us looking at our own poverty. He, of course, knows. We are only coming to know ourselves, and Him. This looking, owning, and bringing is an act of humility. This is an act of hope. This is an act of trust and vulnerability which grace empowers. Hope heals our memory. Hope unites us to God. Hope makes sense of things. Hope brings laughter. 

"Neither do I condemn you," says Jesus to the woman, left alone with Him. Yes, child, I see it. But I see more than anyone else does, including you. I don't condemn you; I give you your life back. Live it now as my gift. You don't need to scrabble for bits of love or purpose any longer. You have met Me, now. Nothing, and no one, can ever take this encounter away from you.

Thanks be to God.