This morning is a good day to begin praying in earnest for Wisdom. The first Scripture reading is of wisdom, and prudence in prayer prior to asking for wisdom.
After closing the eyes, the soul begged His Real Presence for the gift of wisdom.
Then, there was a bit of time out doors, picking the remains of tomatoes, Delicata and Acorn squash, and pulling some weeds. The gardens are rather a mess of weeds and overgrowth, rotting vines, cucumbers grown too yellow and seedy to eat, and various greens so tall and coarse and going to seed. When another bit of energy comes, will go back out and pick the green tomatoes. There might even be a quart of late season strawberries!
This will be the last day, for awhile, for the roadside table offerings. People have been generous in contributions; and God's good earth has been generous in providing mounds of vegetables.
Am feeling ill today, yet, with the sinus problem. Am just worn out, plus am feeling the pain within of consternation, of questions about certain things, and also of the keen sense of desiring the Lord to a degree that exceeds wanting to be here. So yearn to be with the Lord fully!
The psalm has much depth, appropriate for how the body, mind, heart and soul feels today.
Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain wisdom of heart.
Return, O LORD! How long?
Have pity on your servants!
Fill us at daybreak with your kindness,
that we may shout for joy and gladness all our days.
Make us glad, for the days when you afflicted us,
for the years when we saw evil.
Let your work be seen by your servants
and your glory by their children;
and may the gracious care of the LORD our God be ours;
prosper the work of our hands for us!
Prosper the work of our hands!
--Ps 90:12-13, 14-15, 16-17
The Psalm antiphon offers hope: Fill us with your love, O Lord, and we will sing for joy!
Emboldened the two lines which ask the Lord to make us glad for the days when we were afflicted and when we saw evil.
This is pertinent right now, for am feeling very weary of the afflictions of body and mind and heart and even at times, of the soul. The soul grieves for a purity of being in Christ and free from having to see things that are painful to see and sorrowful to sense. How can a person be glad for the years of seeing ills and nastiness, of evil and wrong doing? How can one be glad for seeing with inner sight and having to live with what is seen?
Perhaps the answer is in not living with what is seen, and of avoiding seeing with deep inner sense. The sure way to not see the ills of the world is to avoid being in the world, whether or not it is the secular world of society or the temporal/secular world of the Church.
There is a certain freedom in being among people who are so steeped in the Living Word that they live in His Word. That certainly seems better than those who live in Canon Laws, for example, or who live in their status or position or labeled vocation. And this is not to cast aspersions on anyone in particular, but in general. There seem to be much living in Canon Laws in the temporal Catholic Church, but then also in breaking those laws in some cases, or interpreting them in various ways, not consistent. All that brings on more feeling of sickness, of weighty weariness, of soul disillusionment.
The hermit is praying about shifting the reference point of writing from third person nothing consecrated Catholic hermit to simply itself, a soul, a child of God, a bride of Christ. Perhaps evade the heaviness of all that is assumed and implied and in fact created and purported that has lent to lengthy defining of a Catholic hermit in the consecrated life of the Catholic Church--and not even getting into private or public profession! All that is sickening and unnecessary heaviness that is so far from even one line of a Psalm or one prayer asking the Holy Spirit for wisdom! All that other is worlds away from a soul desiring His Real Presence, to be subsumed into the Trinity!
This morning was considering John of the Cross and others who hit right up against the heaviness, and the heaviness tried to take their love of Christ from them, tried to weigh them down and even in some, such as John of the Cross, tried to kill him not once but again. In the "again" toward the end of his relatively young life, they tried to make his life so difficult, that they intentionally chose to order him to areas of the world, and then Spain, that they were sure he would dislike.
But by then he had transcended the temporal Catholic world as it played out in his religious order. He had left all that not totally in body, but totally in heart, mind and spirit. And, for the most part, he had left it physically, too, as his body became ill and weakened, and he welcomed whatever horrible place he was to be sent. The worse, the better, for he had detached and knew that if his body would die, he would be totally in eternal bliss--not just with God in mind, heart and spirit.
This hermit is being called to pay more attention to those on the other side who have over the years, given wise advice in visions, locutions, dreams, and simply by reading carefully the best documented books concerning some of them--nothing glossed over by hagiographers trying to make the temporal Catholic world seem better than it is, nor the people in it nicer than they were.
When Jesus a week ago awoke "me" in the night (for it was me who He awoke and gave the message, although it is a marvelous message for anyone interested in pondering it), He said: "Look at ME." He did not say look at the temporal Catholic world, nor look at canon laws, nor look at diocesan games and tricks or priests or parishioners getting played, nor look at your own desperate attempts to distract or to fit into what is seen even though not wanting to see it.
He said "Look at ME."
So I am trying to, with all my body, mind, heart, and spirit. I am not only trying to look at Jesus, but I am trying to love Him with all my heart--and yes, at this point it is rather with a desperation and clinging kind of love. Leaving behind distractions of all types, and of those that can even cause me to doubt, takes full focus on Jesus and loving Him in blind faith.
I have certainly learned to not follow people blindly, nor would I want them to follow me blindly. Jesus warned us there are wolves in sheep's clothing. He did not have a lot of good to say about the temporal Jewish church in His day, that is for sure. It was His church growing up, and the church of His nation, but He saw more than enough and said, "Follow Me."
So I will look at Jesus, and I will follow Jesus.
And I think in doing these two things, that I will be able to be quite glad to look back on the days when I was afflicted and the years when I saw evil.
God bless His Real Presence in me (and in you, whoever reads this!) I love you, my fellow children, but you do not need to love me in return. Jesus' love streams in on me through the window, flowing from the sun.
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