Meeting the Next Step

His Real Presence moves us along whenever we ask and desire to be given the next step.

I have been asking God to please reveal in greater detail, His dream for me that I might better live it.  He clarified the teaching of the spiritual in that it is not going to be pedantic or formal instruction.  Rather, I am to share observations, experiences, trials, errors and lessons learned.  

This modality of teaching is a form of storytell- ing.  It is inwardly visual.  We can relate in whatever ways--yes, personally--without being ourselves in the story.  The story stands beyond, as if on a screen, and we can learn by the interaction of our thoughts with what our individual and collective mind's eye sees.  It is a part, and in part, my part, of the dream.

His dream for us will always utilize our God-given gifts as well as be livable within our daily life circumstances.

Some of the writing and sharing, will be temporal and some spiritual.  I pray the bulk is spiritual, but I am recently aware that much of the trials undergone, including the past 19 years as a Catholic, are necessary so as to see a reality of our souls in our sins.  This very much affects the view and experience as people: as parishioners, consecrated religious, and clergy in the temporal and spiritual aspects of the Church.

Experiencing the rawness and reality of sin and its effects on and in the Body of Christ, His Church, in very temporal ways, helps understand the impact, thus, on the spiritual, or hindrances thereof.  Also, without experiencing the painfulness of sinful situations in the temporal Church, we would not then be instilled with great love and desire to help build up and "grow" as members of the Body, into spiritual beings in Christ and as His Body.

The example of insemination, gestation, labor, childbirth--then lovingly participating in the growth of the new life into beautiful adulthood--helps me grasp why I have been shown or involved with pathetic to putrid situation after situation.  

Time and again, the spiritual ideal would be tempered by pain and agony in the reality.  I think of the "woman crying out in pains of childbirth."  Until two nights ago, I did not see the reasons for so many upsetting experiences and situations within the temporal Church. 

But in the onset of labor and well into the intense birth pains, what woman (or even her husband) could find any good reason for God's allowing such agony?  However, we have the answer in the love between husband and wife for the hope and realization of new life, wrought from intimate union in the height of the act of love.  What mother or father, then, once smitten with the tangible effect and the future of this love that will grow and develop, would not stop at anything to protect and promulgate this physio-mystical outcome of love?

This is what makes sense to me, now.  Fall in love with Christ.  Fall in love with His Church.  Be shown the glorious, the spiritual, the mystical within the temporal.  Unite intimately with all this.  Then be shown the temporal reality, the humanly sinful, the effect of the human sins, and suffer greatly, over and over, through seemingly endless, painful contractions. 

Take on the responsibility for the avowal of loving commitment.  Love more than explicable, that which is born mystically of the spiritual being lived out in temporal form on earth.  Desire to go to any lengths, any suffering, even death, to help, with the beloved Spouse, this temporal and mystical being of Christ, and his humans, Christ's Church, His Body.  

I must experience the full realities in all their dualities and oneness.  I must love so much as to be willing to suffer much, so as to desire to unite in Christ in all He sees and knows of us, His Body, the Church.  With Him and by His grace, I then am committed by love to help make reparation for, correct, protect, promote and grow the spiritual ideal, to assist in the furthering of Christ's life on earth as it is in Heaven:  the temporal and the mystical Church.

At this juncture, there is not so much the need of more painful reality of the pangs of childbirth.  Now the Spouse withdraws me all the more from that aspect of seeing and experiencing and suffering.  The spiritual ideal remains, but it has undergone the loss of innocence and naivete.  I have learned to sniff evil and how to persevere through to the other side of sulfuric darkness.  His Real Presence taught me, and I have yet so much to learn.  

But this is a juncture point, and I am further removed from the temporal aspects of parish life, of the goings on of parishioners and clergy.  My participation is through prayer and letting God take care of what He knows best in the temporal details.  My prayers are for the souls of His Body, living and active, this side and the other.  My sufferings are for the soul of His Church, united mystically with His Real Presence, in the mystery, the Sacrament of Love, poured out as a living, holy, pleasing holocaust in His Sight.

Yes, it does seem strange to be dipped in for 19 years and then plucked out.  My eyes have seen more than enough of sin and sorrows within His Body:  parishioners, consecrated religious, His priests, and me!  My head and heart have known the depths and heights of love for the Church and all Her Members.  

He has wounded and consecrated my heart.  He has placed His Crucifix into my heart.  Michael has driven his spear down into it.  He has stripped me, body and soul, in readiness for more nothingness than humanly or spiritually anticipated.  

He has allowed Satan to tempt with despair and bring me to the breaking point.  But He rescued me.  He sent saints and angels; He heard the prayers of my family and friends on earth and of heaven.  He has brought me this far when of my own, I would have given up this life.  

And now, against all odds (for it is indeed odd that I am plucked out of what temporal aw and reason would have it) He will lead me in what is next, further out into the eerily deep and still waters, yet peacefully and very much so, for His Love, His Body, the Church, for souls!