Been spending much time in solitude and silence, in deeper thoughts, in taking heed of the questions that arise in my heart, in the disruption of inner peace that has been off and on for going on three months. These times in our lives come from God's desiring for us to dig a bit deeper into the treasure chest that is Him. He desires for us to take the time necessary through, with, and in Him. These periods are not meant to be rushed.
I found in the Gospel (Luke 24:38, 45-47) a few days ago, the guidance in His Living Word that is so beautifully Christ, so meaningfully and obvious in God's alone: His speaking to such as myself, from within His Heart and from His abiding within my heart and soul.
"Then He said to them, 'Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts?'... Then He opened their minds to understand the scriptures. And He said to them, 'thus it is written that the Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem."
In examining the questions that arise in my heart, in dissecting why I am troubled, it is not to do with the external aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. My hermit existence for over 20 years and the level of suffering of nearly 36 years, the various lived experiences in God's pruning me, especially since my hermit profession and vows, and the death experience of nearly 33 years ago, has my body, mind, heart, and spirit more inclined with the reality of God's being the epicenter of the universe, of all creation, of all. All the more, I find in our human nothingness, the reality of God's allness.
And in His being the alpha and omega of all existence, through word, deed and the source of all beingness, I know that all is as He wills and desires. "All is well and all shall be well" (God's words to Julian of Norwich, 14th c.).
And the questions that arise in my heart have been, of course, answered by Jesus' forgiveness and mercy, involving my lamentation during Lent, of my abject sinfulness and need of on-going repentance and forgiveness, eternally. Let it be done unto me, according to Thy word! You are forgiven! Go, and sin no more!
St. Augustine's (Bishop, Doctor of the Church (354-430) sermon 116 provides yet more guidance in the answer of some of the questions, the troubling wonderings.
"It is good for man, not that thoughts should arise in his heart but that his heart should arise--arise, that is to say to where the apostle Paul wanted to set the hearts of the faithful when he said to them: 'If you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When your life appears, then you too will appear with Him in glory' (Col 3:1-4). What glory is this? The glory of the resurrection....'
So I pondered what St. Augustine reminds, what he expresses to me, what cut through the questions that were in my heart, the unsettling sense that goes more personally yet expansively to my own purpose and life, to that of my vocation of these two decades of life, and of what has altered in that vocation, a minor detail in one way of viewing it, but a detail that changes the course of history and tradition, henceforth. It is a detail that in its actuality is succinct and simple; but the add-ons and interpretations that become then precedent and as if law, have created a human element that then includes vacillation as vast as there are human thoughts, preferences, and temporal complexities.
My mind thus returns to the clarity of Augustine's riveting upon the Scriptures, the Word of God, of the disciples of Christ who knew our Lord while He was God-Man living among humanity on earth.
"As for us, we believe in the word of these disciples without their having shown us the Savior's risen body....But at that time such an event seemed unbelievable. And so our Savior led them to believe, not by sight alone but by touch, so that by means of the senses faith might enter their hearts and be preached throughout the world to those who had neither seen nor touched but who, nevertheless, would believe unhesitatingly (cf. Jn 20:29)."
Blessed are they who have not seen yet who still believe in Jesus as the Son of God, the Messiah, our Lord and Savior.
On this Sunday of Divine Mercy, the Sunday after Easter Sunday, I continue my rising out of troubling questions and observations. I allow myself to be guided back to God's will and Christ's Living Word and to the strength and faith of the apostles and the holy Christians through these past 20 centuries. His Real Presence (God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit), the Virgin Mary our Heavenly Mother, God's angels and saints will continue to reinforce in me the next phase.
While discernment includes detecting details not quite meshing with or bringing inner peace for logical and sensible reasons, and while we often must wait patiently in the troubling observations, real and valid as they are, we also know that concurrently we are being lifted out of the troubling stirrings in our hearts--more than we ourselves are doing the rising.
We place ourselves in God, in Christ, in the Holy Spirit--the Three-in-One of the Trinity--and we know we are being raised up out of some aspects of us that need to die. We do not know where we are being taken other than in small glimpses. And on our part, we must be willing to do that which is necessary to shovel the earth over what was, and to trust in Jesus all the more. Trust in Jesus totally; trust in not wanting something other when we can have Him directly now.
The lifting up, the rising up out of ourselves, out of the God-intended lack of inner peace, continues over a period of earth time, until we can be assured in our own minds and hearts, in our human need for steadiness in discernment, in not being humanly rash. We will know when the point arrives of our being lifted up, arising out of what served its purpose, and placed by His Real Presence into a new phase, another level, a different perspective that retains more fully the graduation into what God wills that requires a letting go of what God willed previously.
Metamorphosis of spiritual progress, of soul progression, is a continuum and ever in motion, spiraling as a double helix of soul in God Who Is Love.
God bless His Real Presence in us!
Jesus, I trust in YOU!
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