How unworthy I am to receive Him thus…And yet, how little I can resist Him – He – my Beloved, the Prince of Peace…
We have been keeping hens in our backyard for a few months now. One of them went “broody” a few weeks ago and knowing that she would be able to sit on a nest and hatch some chicks, we decided to buy some fertilised eggs for her to sit on so that she would be able to hatch her own chicks.
A hen sits on her nest for 21 days waiting for her eggs to hatch. And this is exactly what was happening with our pretty white hen. And then, late on the afternoon of the nineteenth day of her sitting when my children went out to the coop to ensure that this broody hen ate and drank (because broody hens tend to neglect their own needs in the interests of their eggs and sometimes need reminding) they noticed something strange...
And, all of a sudden I had three very distressed children rushing back into the house to tell me that “Fragile” (yes, that is the name that they choose for that particular broody hen) had accidentally stepped on her own egg and cracked it and should they throw that egg into the bin.
Now – before you laugh – neither my children nor I have ever raised hens before (that is strictly my husband’s domain) and my husband was at work at the time. And so, when my children made that discovery of the cracked egg, we simply assumed that the egg was destroyed and the chick from that egg would never hatch…
Until we stopped for a minute to think. Once we started thinking about it and we worked out the date, we realised how close we were to 21 days, and we were able to deduce that the egg that we had thought was trash was a treasure because it was hatching a little early! And we were ecstatic to realise that soon, we would have a new addition in our chicken coop!
And I have been reflecting on this because just as we failed to recognise our precious hatching chick, so too do I fail to recognise my Beloved…
You see, just like that cracked egg, my Beloved comes to me in many ways – He comes to you too...
Sometimes, He comes in the tears of a friend. Sometimes, He is in their smile. Sometimes, He comes to my in the silence of my heart. Sometimes, He is in the noise.
And always always always I can have Him in the sacraments – none more so than the sacrament of the Blessed Eucharist.
And how unworthy I am to receive Him thus… And yet, how little I can resist Him – He – my Beloved, the Prince of Peace…
For He is there, waiting for me with infinite patience, and I can receive Him in the little white wafer of bread – Him, He, Lord of the Universe, Creator of all the world – inside that tiny piece of bread…
And to all the world He appears as worthless as a little cracked egg.
But for all the world He remains in that little crumb of bread. He remains there for all the world – but He remains there for me, and for you too …
And when I think of the miracle of that offering of my Beloved to me, I am speechless – utterly speechless – because my Lord, the KING OF THE UNIVERSE, comes to my worthless miserable soul in a simple crust of bread – and He does it for LOVE OF ME… Over and over and over again…
And how can one such as I ever give thanks to one such as He for the miracle of that?
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
Beautiful beautiful