Might seem far apart, but the Lord provides me with humor in the most unlikely and even persecuting of earthly circumstances. I remind myself that humility and sincerity are helpful and hopeful that Jesus will view me with love and mercy.
I rambled on in my vlogs, and blunderingly tried to relate some odd situation that keeps on, regarding surgeon, surgeon's nurse, and the young osteo PA. My surgery is hanging on a condition yet, and I figure not to be surprised if more "conditions" come up from the surgeon and/or his nurse in the next three days.
I met one condition, although it set me back physically to jump through that hoop. I don't plan to explain here as have already--not in any impressive relating of the situation but enough that maybe others can make sense of it. What I'm impressed with most, now, even though at the time it was terrible and I felt that the surgeon's nurse had been perhaps vindictive in her extreme interpretation of my honest explanation of why a person in constant and increasingly more severe pain, and this for years and years, would have dark thoughts from time to time.
Anyway, there was much humor from that adventure, and I can find many aspects so marvelous as to praise God repeatedly, for having had the experience, no over. One point of humor is that honesty is not always the best policy! And all things are relative to any given set of circumstances; and as well, people we pay in this temporal realm to provide for us often do not have a grasp of the pain, for example, that the population they are being trained, educated, paid to serve, do indeed bear, sometimes for decades until they are released from earthly bodies.
I've realized the good of now repeating my vow of and consecration to suffering. There are excellent reminders when I made the vow again this morning, with whomever as witnesses this time. Always the Lord knows--His Real Presence knows--and Our Lady of Sorrows by also the title, Our Lady of Solitude. She knows. They have accepted my offering years ago, even when I'd forget in the midst of one of many pain sieges, or such as now with a steady increase in pain hour by hour and a steady decline in bodily strength.
Yet, I can praise the Lord, for the reminders in the vow of suffering include responding in love. Plus, I am reminded of the lofty calling for those of us who suffer and have been called by Christ to be one of His Own--such as a victim soul of His Sacred Heart.
The distractions of the temporal world--of which I admit I allow them and sometimes seem to chase after them, even, in human desperation to take my mind out of body and away from pain--these can also cause us to forget the purpose, the good, the goal that is so critical to remember in order to suffer well, or better, for love of His Real Presence, His Church and all in His Body, and as His Mother--suffered in union with her Son.
The Gospel for today reminds to praise God--the Gospel for today's Mass reading (and celebrated today in the Universal Church as Ascension of our Lord despite Thursday past the traditional day, nine days prior to Pentecost).
"As He blessed them He parted from them
and was taken up to heaven.
They did Him homage
and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy,
and they were continually in the temple praising God."
So many aspects of loving and serving God can be so easily forgotten consciously when in pain or when otherwise not in pain and out living an active life.
In this sense, pain is a good way of life, for it does tend to be a constant reminder if we allow it to infuse and inform our spiritual lives--minds, hearts, and souls.
While my body right now is not "up" for driving to the 24-hour Adoration Chapel at the parish, nor would it be prudent for me to tax the body to attempt that physically, I am reminded that the tabernacle is also my heart, and that my heart is in Christ's Sacred Heart, and I am also bound by various vows and consecrations to Mary's Immaculate Heart.
So I can, with great joy (have to ask grace to be joyful even if it does not "show"), I can continually be in "the temple" praising God.
Praising God! That is really simple enough. Just takes the mind God gives us and the physical senses that are blessings, and if some of them have failed over time or injury, then the inner senses that are always there for us--that we should pray and do all we can not to prohibit full reign within us.
So I can look about me in this bedroom of my Solus Deus Hermitage, and I can praise God for many things seen and unseen. I can have an inner sense look about my mind, heart, and spirit and have multitudinous experiences and aspects of which to praise God!
I have renewed my vow of suffering, and within that vow are so many points upon which to praise God, including that I have made the vow. Just making a vow, offering all aspects of suffering as a victim soul of Jesus as well as in response to agreeing and accepting the power of God's making my sufferings and the sufferings of Holy Mother Church: as One.
I can also praise God that He has given me many situations to laugh about, and also to laugh at my own stupidity of sorts, to have answered a couple questions with honesty, when honesty was not at all the best policy given the person who was asking--that person's personality and intentions being not as one might hope or expect.
Yet, I can praise God for the very fact and reality that He is in His Omniscience, Omnipotence, and Omnipresence is the Master over all that He allows us to experience in this life. He is always calling us via the cross, to the next situation, the next moment, the next higher level of suffering or the next lessening of suffering.
He is calling us always to offer our sufferings with a heart and mind and spirit of PRAISE to His Glory, His Power, His Might!
No matter the temporal outcomes determined by others' reactions and decisions, we who have given ourselves fully to His Real Presence, have the assurance that God's will, will be done! That is a major praise--and what a relief of otherwise what can be quite a heavy burden to bear--too heavy, in fact.
Carrying the cross or crosses He gifts us, and with the help from others along the way, is our calling, our mission, our work. Even if but one person helping us carry our cross or crosses, now and then, we can praise God. (But most likely there are so many helping us we do not notice--such as our guardian angels and most definitely all the ones who love us and root for us from the other side!) So many seen and unseen help us carry the cross we've been given in any present moment.
Yet also with such lofty and serious realities, God also gifts us with the ability to have a sense of humor--an outer sense, yes, but in times of suffering, the inner sense of humor remains inviolable. Humor sprinkled in humility is like salt enhancing the flavor of food. We can laugh at ourselves; lighten the darkest moment, lighten deepest pain, lighten most humbling of situations.
Jesus Christ is ascended to heaven. He sent the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit. His Real presence is with us, in us, through us; we are in Him always. Remain in His Love! Repentance, Humility, Love and Mercy mark our souls with the reality of His Real Presence for all eternity.
God bless His Real Presence in us!
His Real Presence makes all the difference, always.
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