So many concerns for the people of Ukraine, including the brave soldiers and civilians fighting for the freedom of their country. I pray also for the Russian soldiers who are forced by brainwashed upbringing, as well as those conscripted, into fighting to kill others in another country, mercilessly. I ask His Real Presence to please stop Vladimir Putin and those around him, for their horrific behaviors and decisions of invading another country.
It's Lent, and my body now also has besides the sinus infection that continues at end of fourth week, with sawdust having scratched my left eye. I need prayers to cope with the pain of what the ophthalmologist says are scratches and a contusion. I realize that His Real Presence allows my injured eye to be a reminder that I am to be seeing all, at least for now, with inner eye.
While I'm unable to get a second zpack to finish pushing out the sinus infection, I found when I went to pharmacy to get the ointment and antibiotic drops for the eye, that the young GP had at least sent a prescription for some nasal spray. I have two OTC sprays I've been using, but I'll give this hopefully stronger type a try. I've called the ophthalmologist office to find out what they recommend for the pain of left eye. When there, the doctor had put numbing drops in the eye, but that wore off after a couple hours. Boo hoo hoo. Actually, praise God as have more to offer as pain prayer for many intentions, particularly the raging war going on in Ukraine. God please convert Putin's soul, and other souls, as well.
I've written to Fr. V. asking what he thinks of my thoughts on the church as passageway, the temporal on to the stairway to heaven, on to heaven eternally. It does seem that my temporal body is not needed by God to be in the temporal Church, and at this phase of spiritual progression, my mind, heart, and soul are fed by His Real Presence, my sins forgiven by His Real Presence, my all and everything led and directed and guided along is of His Real Presence in His Mystical Church.
This means nothing against the temporal Church other than the temporal is always passing away--our bodies and structures, and temporal aspects of our growth and learning as we are progressed along the passageways, the paths, and through this life and the temporal Church of this life. There is nothing negative about it from my view and understanding, also which has progressed, but rather a simple transition of passing through one portal and onto another passageway shown me to be the stairway to heaven.
It is so clear to me, so vivid, so natural, so obvious, so real and so His Real Presence, this progression. He knew I had no bodily purpose or otherwise in the temporal Church; He fulfills all that my soul, mind, heart, and body need in His Mystical Church, directly, mystically. I had learned and given all that God needed of me in passageway of the temporal Church. I am not perfected by any means; but the progression is now on the stairway to heaven--which means it is not heaven, but from what I was shown, a stairway that extends as if eternally, forever.
God bless His Real Presence in us! Love in His Love!
2 comments:
Researching a book about the mass a few years back, I found and saved yours of July 4, 2019, about Bishop Basil of Seleucia, from his Sermon for the Resurrection, in which this popped out at me.
". . . faith is crucial in our spiritual lives, and faith is strengthened by God in many ways--individually, personally, and also in universal ways, communal worship, being part of the Body of Christ."
Additionally, your commentary is very well done. I intend to keep track of you.
Sorry--not tech-saavy but just noticed your comment and posted it! I did not write the book, but it sounds excellent. I do appreciate your thoughts on the crucial attainment of faith in our spiritual lives. I agree fully! I also want to point out that the communal worship and even Mass, in some situations, when not so feasible, one comes to understand through His Real Presence, that one can be subsumed in the Mass spiritually, and partake of communion spiritually--even perhaps by action of the Holy Spirit it becomes a mystical experience that does not need to be felt or seen inwardly and without any special or noticeable effect. That is where your point on faith comes in all the more. And I have since realized, that love is the ultimate--to learn to love as God Loves, to grasp His Law of Love as it fulfills all other laws. By Love in and of His Real Presence, and faith that we are IN His Real Presence and He is in us, we are with worshippers all over the world as well as in heaven, and we are sharing in Eucharist although not tangibly, but truly. There is no fanfare, no sparklers going off in our heads, no warm fuzzy feeling--or not necessarily. But we receive HIs Body and Blood all the same, by our faith and love and the reality that we have come to know without doubt, that He is in us and we are in Him. I came to this, also, when covid was preventing people from being in the temporal Church structure, and worshipping in person one with another physically, and not receiving his Body and Blood tangibly, which is an act of faith and trust, a spiritual mystery but reality. That insight and reality of the vastness of worship and Mass within as He is within us and we are in His Real Presence, plus having read of so many early hermits and others, who did not receive tangibly for decades, yet received Him in some other way, and grew exponentially in the spiritual life, in prayer and praise, in the ways of contemplation and into the unitive phase. I believe that His Real Presence helped guide me to these realities and of temporal, holy examples, so that I would better accept that He had reasons why He was closing the temporal doors for me, in effect, to be in a parish and even in some aspects a diocese per se. Now I am understanding more, and am given the peace that allows me to trust His will and some visions and locutions that I had resisted or did not understand--either way. Now I will be more accepting of this next passageway which I was shown nearly 16 years ago--but to God our time is not His. Being part of the Body of Christ--we are, most definitely, by virtue of our being in His Real Presence and HIs Real Presence in us, and in His Church temporal or his Mystical Church for eternity, in which Christ Alone is Head and we who love, believe in and follow Him are His Body--there we have it: the Church in both aspects, the one temporal and the other mystically pure now and forever! God Bless His Real Presence in you, and Love in His Love!
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