January 15th, 2007
Day 7

(This is just an interesting bit of reflection)
When eating- take enough and then imagine you are dining with God. Imagine that you are given the Heavenly equivalent of every item of food or drink you sit with- a glass of water beside Living Water, a piece of bread with butter and honey next to the Bread of Life. The “real” food will register sensually to taste, touch, sight, sound, and smell but will not satisfy. Even after eating you will still want to eat more. Heaven’s food, if you pray for the grace of receiving it, will not register sensually but will satisfy. Let the world’s food nourish; let God’s grace satisfy you.

(Here is the main message of this update.)
Faith alone is not enough. Say you believe in God, Jesus, etc. and that sometimes you pray, time permitting. Say you even read the Bible often enough, and even go to some kind of Christian service once in a while. Say you were baptized 25 years ago and confirmed 10 years ago. That may seem like enough to prove your faith to any who looks closely.
Look at it this way.
You are 45 years old. You and this woman/man grew up together, fell in love and were engaged when you were both 20, but didn’t marry for 15 years. That whole time you told them that you loved them, told other people, and sometimes you answered their phone messages or even called them first. Sometimes you read their letters and sometimes you even wrote back. Maybe once, twice a month you even visit their house. You always had faith that they’d keep in touch, always be there for you, and they were even though you were often away somewhere, didn’t return calls, etc.
This probably explains the 15 years of engagement! But even after that mediocre, lukewarm time with you, they propose marriage! They want to love you forever, to let you into the family, to enter yours. You consent. Why not? They are very faithful and very attractive and rich, always giving you gifts and doing things for you.
Ten years pass and nothing is different. You are still away most of the time, don’t call or call back, you don’t write or reply to their letters, you don’t communicate or do anything much at all.
But you still have faith that they’ll be there, and they will. You still say you love them, and tell others that you love your spouse; married, in fact. You show the ring.
Does something seem wrong with this? Sure, you could prove your faith like I could open my wallet and prove that I am a member of the Knights of Columbus or that my blood-type is A+. But how about proving your faithfulness? Like your spouse is faithful? Hmm? Where is the LOVE being given by both people to each other? Does faith alone save or even make a marriage like this? Does simply believing that you are married make the marriage? No!
LOVE does! Love, reinforced with faith, by which faithfulness is a result, kept strong by hope. But love, faithfulness (the fullness of faith!) takes effort, consistency, forgiveness, acts; all sorts of things. To bear fruit, it takes even more work! Isn’t it worth it, though, to return the love and faithfulness of God, your fiancée through Baptism (the engagement or betrothal) and your spouse in Confirmation (the marriage)?

It is very clear that God loves us, but He does not stop at simply saying, “I love you.” He has shown it, He has proven it, He has labored in love for us. He has faith in us, as we have in Him. Should we not go beyond simply having faith and go the entire distance that faith truly calls us to? If we feel unworthy of grace, if we feel like we do not deserve this great love our Creator has for us, we should not withdraw. We must run ever deeper into His embrace by showing that we love Him. This takes courage and effort, and oftentimes the greatest hurdle to overcome is ourselves, our own weaknesses. But God sees past them into the very core of us, and loves us wherever we are. These weaknesses do not stop God from loving us, but they do prevent us from loving Him as He deserves; why would you wish to remain as you are, stagnant? Would you not wish to allow the love of God to change you, by cooperating with His love, by letting HIS FAITH in YOU bear fruit? We are truly a voluntary soil; we allow things to grow within us. God’s love is as much sunlight as it is seed, but the seed will only grow if we allow it. In growing, it will change us into people of prayer, of love, of action. Other’s will see God’s love by seeing how we love ourselves and each other.

“If we are the Body, Why aren’t His arms reaching? Why aren’t His hands healing, His words teaching? If we are the Body, why aren’t His feet going?”

Jesus Himself loved everyone, but did He just sit around and talk about it? He healed, He walked, He died. He saw people who were unworthy, undeserving, but He did not leave them there, He challenged them to come closer. Even the most sinless of His apostles were unworthy, yet, they were chosen. God loves us, and look at the proof, the fruits of that love. If we say that we believe, that we love, that we have faith, as God has all these things in us, where is our proof? Where are our fruits?

January 14^th, 2007

Day 6

Since God gave me everything, all I truly could ever want is mine already. Grace isn’t so much a gift, then, but is more the gift of realizing what has already been given. Grace is like the wind that gently blows the dirt off of the gift that has been there all along. I used to think that grace was “God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense,” but now I see it rather as “God’s Revelation At Christ’s Expense.”

The grace I asked for was to feel profound sorrow, to feel the full weight of my sin. I thought for most of the hour that I was doing something wrong because I was recalling some terrible sins and was feeling, at best, very guilty. I can recall some of the sorrow near the occasion of particular sins, but couldn’t feel it. I even tried imagining myself at a mock trial of my final judgment. Still, only very guilty.

I slowly let go of my frustrations and a slow truth finally emerged near the end of my prayer hour-

            The Holy Spirit dwells within me. God, in Christ, with us in the Holy Spirit, is like Simon as I, a beaten, broken, exhausted sinner, carry the cross of my sins. I am not devastated or sinking because God, the mighty God of infinite strength, is bearing the brunt of my sin. Guilt, sorrow, weight is all experienced by me and sometimes in great amount, but never in amounts that would crush me as the full effect of all my many sins surely would. God is with me, not doing it all instead of me doing it, but lovingly doing it with me.

            God praises me with encouragement through His many gifts, especially His Son. God reveres me by putting Himself below me, bearing most of the weight of my sins, while also allowing me to help, acknowledging my own strength, too. God serves me by helping me carry my cross.

            I should respond to all this by praising God for His unmatched generosity, revering Him by carrying my share with humility and consciousness, and by allowing His gifts and encouragement to bear fruit, and serve Him by doing my very best to avoid sin, thereby making His VERY heavy load lighter.

            Now tell me, anyone: what god out there can compete with all this? None.

Guilt is the pain of sin cutting upon the soul; memory is the scar.

In Eden, all desires were and are fulfilled in God’s time, and a perfect unity with God allows a person to trust that and to live with patience in all wants and desires.

            Sin is the flawed effort of trying to create one’s own Eden by fulfilling a want or desire in one’s own time without regard or trust toward God to fulfill it for us, in His time.

I’m back at the novitiate! This means I can continue posting my Long Retreat Journal (you’ll have to go back a couple of entries to find where we all left off). So, here is the next part! (And remember these are merely my thoughts and responses to my experience; I am not a theologian!)

Christ, being fully man, consecrates our bodies, teaching us how to maintain them as fitting and holy dwellings for God to live in.

With that gift, another is possible. Before Christ died, He gave us the Eucharist. God GAVE US His own body and blood as a taste of the resurrection to come, to feed our souls so that they can continue to resist sin. With the Eucharist, with God physically dwelling within us, everything comes full-circle in a very close way as it was in the beginning: we are God’s, and God is ours. After Christ’s resurrection, we are doubly blessed with the Holy Spirit, the SPIRIT of GOD. God’s spirit now dwells within us, now that our bodies can be holy places appropriate for Him to dwell in, and now that His very flesh, His body and blood, is here for His spirit to occupy. In the Eucharist, God in His complete fullness and existence exists within us!!!!

How humble and poor is our God, in the most touching way, that He literally has given us EVERYTHING because He loves us so much! He gave us all of creation, and then He gave us everything else: Himself! His true wealth is LOVE, from which His power, greatness, mercy, and all else is derived, and He is just DROWNING us in it!

If death is of sin and Christ was free from slavery to sin, how could He die? He was fully human, and humans die, but why did He have to die? In order to fulfill God’s promise of reopening Paradise to us, of forgiving sins, and all the many promises found throughout the Old Testament, in order for God’s Will to be fulfilled, Christ HAD to die. In order to serve God, Jesus had to choose death. If Jesus chose to avoid death or to lessen the experience even in the slightest way, He would have sinned. Jesus wasn’t so much killed as He was perfectly obedient to God.

Sin is when we go against our purpose of praising, reverencing and serving God. Every sin increases the distance between what we were (created perfect) and what we are (imperfect) until the distance is so great that we cease to be human and are recognizable only as a shadow of our origin, and only by becoming what we were meant to be will we be recognized at the gates of Eden.

Our spirit is the only part of us that can be restored to its Eden-state; our flesh has to be left behind, as it is the property of Sin now. The challenge of life is to resist selling your soul to sin, to avoid sin owning you 100%. If that happens and you die in that state, freedom just isn’t and option.

“God, you gave me all of Your creation, and I screwed up. Later You gave me Your Son, Your whole Self to me, and I STILL screw up. Why would a God of Infinite everything give me all this when I’ve maybe given You five good years out of the twenty-three that I have?”

After a while, the answer hit- because He loves me. That is why I am worth it all. God gives us all that is His- His creation and His very existence, hoping that we will give Him the one thing that isn’t automatically His- OUR love. He wants it so much because He loves us so much, and He has everything else anyways!

Another thought- the Eucharist is such a beautiful thing. We offer simple bread and wine as ourselves in Christ’s body and blood, our shared humanity. God accepts our offering and gives in exchange HIS body and blood, divine body and blood so that as He shared in our humanity, WE can share in His divinity.

There was a Christmas episode of “The Simpsons” in which Marge and Homer are about to exchange gifts and Homer realizes he hasn’t gotten one yet. So he runs off to try and find her something on Christmas Eve, and all the shops close just as he arrives. He returns home sad and tells Marge that he forgot to get her a gift. She forgives him and hands him her gift. He looks at the tag and it says, “To Marge, from Homer.” He’s confused and she says, “I knew that you would forget, so I got you the gift that you would want the most: something to give to me.” Homer gets it and hands her the gift and though she already knows what it is, she absolutely adores it.

In the same way, God gave us the Eucharist as the perfect gift to Him, even though we are just giving Him back everything He gave to us, and every time we do this He smiles and says, “Awww…… you shouldn’t have!” and lovingly cherishes our gift forever.

In a way, we are wealthier than God. We have everything, and He has everything but ONE thing: OUR love.

My love, Your greatest desire God, seems so small compared to what you give for it- all creation, Your Son, Yourself, eternal life. But then, those things must seem so small to You compared to my love that You desire above all else.

Today I spent some time at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Unknown to many is the fact that Marquette’s archives contains one of the largest collections of J.R.R. Tolkien’s papers and manuscripts.

Today, since I am so very blessed, I was allowed to view and TOUCH three pages from the Book of Mazarbul (above- a picture of the book from the film) that Tolkien himself wrote and drew on the back of student exams he had finished correcting. They are wonderful and detailed drawings all written in Dwarven runes with ink and then shaded to look like vellum with colored pencils with blood smears, ash, burn marks and bloodstains. There were only three pages ever made, the first and last in Dwarven runes and the second in LOVELY Elvish script. I thought I was going to faint having these pages in my hands!

I also was able to flip through his first draft of a chapter from The Fellowship of the Ring when the fellowship is entering Moria. This was all handwritten on paper without lines, much of it on the backs of other papers and scraps of paper he had laying around. Within these was also the first sketch of the Door to Moria (the “speak friend and enter” door) and later I saw the finished sketch in lovely blue ink drawn by Tolkien himself.

What an awesome day! Holding and touching and seeing and smelling the original pages of what would become the Lord of the Rings! All right now, honestly, who is jealous?