If I could just stop crying, then I could hear Him standing with me…
Today, I was praying for a myriad of intentions. I prayed for those who grieve, and those who are ill and those who are sad or lost or lonely. I prayed in thanksgiving for all the blessings in my life, and in grief for all the losses.
When I prayed for these things – these blessings and grief in my life – I prayed with equal joy – for both the blessings and the losses are treasures from my Beloved.
When He answers YES to my prayers – His Will Be Done… and when He answers NO to my prayers – His Will Be Done.
And what is His Will other than Pure Holy Goodness and Love?
I have not always been this way. In fact, I have been quite the opposite for almost all my life.
When I prayed the Our Father and said the words, “YOUR will be done…” though my words AFFIRMED His will, my thoughts CONTRADICTED it. It was NOT GOD’S WILL that I wanted done, but my own! I never prayed with intention to surrender to God’s HOLY WILL. My prayers demanded that God surrendered to MINE.
And despite this stupidity, despite this selfishness, despite this complete and utter misunderstanding of who God is and what He does, God continued to Bless me. And He never left this worthless sheep. While I was crying my tears of despair because I could not surrender to the blessings that I have received, because they were of God’s choosing and not my own, He never left me alone. While I was wailing my total loneliness, God held me close and listened to me in silence.
How much time I have wasted? How many tears did I add to my Beloved’s burden on that Cross?
These days, my grief at causing this pain to my Beloved horrifies me… I am bewildered by it… I am at a loss to put into words my utter devastation at the torment I caused Him…
How many tears did I add to His already impossible burden?
Was it my ingratitude that caused the blood to sweat through His skin during the Agony in the Garden? Was it His prayers for me and my worthless soul that caused Him to seek out the disciples who were sleeping and ask them to pray with Him?
When I cried a million billion tears of grief for all the sorrows of my life, did He feel the weight of those tears on the Cross? Did they shorten His Earthly life by even an instant?
Was it my sin that made Him fall? Did He see my offences as the nails went in?
My Lord and my God, how sorry I am…
How sorry I am…
I have started reading some of the work of the Venerable Reverend Fulton Sheen over recent days. Venerable John Fulton Sheen was an American Bishop and television evangelist – often cited as the first television evangelist – from the 1930s on radio to the late 1960 on television.
In one of His presentations, Venerable Fulton Sheen said… “Peace, we are just discovering, is in the identity of our will with God, who wills our perfection. When we disobey His will, we are not asserting our independence; we are mutilating our personality as we might mutilate a razor by using it to cut a tree. Being made for God, we can be happy only with Him. All our misery is traceable to that rebellion. All our peace is traceable to training the lower part of ourselves in service to Him. Hence the Cross, the symbol of that sacrifice inspired by love.”
Now - to express my true sorrow - I will stop trying to make my religion SUIT my life, and instead live the DEMANDS of my religion.
For what are these demands other than the WILL OF GOD?
Mine is not a CROSSLESS Christ. My Christ is the Paschal Sacrifice. My Christ cries for my tears and weeps for my grief, and all He asks of me is my trust in Him.
Christ was almost entirely silent on the Cross.
No wonder, I fail to hear Him standing with me when I cry.
His is a silent suffering. He is silent today as He was silent two thousand years ago on the Cross.
If I could just stop crying for a minute, I would be able to hear Him standing there.
If I could just stop crying, then I could hear…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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