Sacred Moments

Sitting on the love seat with my mom; we talk about her fears for the future … whether she will have more strokes; whether she will suffer cancer the way her mother did; how long she will be able to live independently.

She lays her head on my lap, like a child.

She tells me I really don’t know how much she loves me. I tell her that I love her, too, and that we’re blessed to have this time together.

We sit like this, her head on my lap, for a long time, neither hurrying to leave.

Sacred moments.

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The Fulfillment of All Desire

I’m not even through the first chapter yet and already I want to quote it, to ponder it, to drink it in.

The book is The Fulfillment of All Desire by Ralph Martin. He writes about how we all tend to think there will be a better time later on … that we are too busy, the circumstances too difficult, that now is not the right time … to draw closer to God.

“What really holds us back from a wholehearted response to the call of Jesus … of the repeated urgings of the Spirit, is not really the external circumstances of our lives, but the interior sluggishness of our hearts. We need to be clear that there will never be a better time or a better set of circumstances than now to respond wholeheartedly to the call of holiness. Who knows how much longer we’ll be alive on this earth? We don’t know how long we’ll live or what the future holds. Now is the acceptable time. The very things we think are obstacles are the very means God is giving us to draw us to depend more deeply on Him.”

I love that, and the quote He uses from Isaiah 35:8-9 to encourage us to begin the journey:

“A highway will be there
called the holy way;
No one unclean may pass over it,
nor fools go astray on it.
No lion will be there,
nor beast of prey go up to be met upon it.
It is for those with a journey to make,
and on it the redeemed will walk.”

I am eagerly on my journey, LORD. Teach me the path, show me the way.

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That We may become the body and blood

It still amazes me when God gives me new understanding – usually in an instant – of something that I’ve heard a zillion times in my life before.

As I prepared for daily mass this week, I mentally placed each of my loved ones on the altar. I do this because I know we can join our prayers, petitions and offerings to the priests’ as he consecrates the bread and wine.

Then it happened – I heard the priests’ prayer with new ears and understanding in that moment:

Therefore, O Lord, we humbly implore you:
by the same Spirit graciously make holy these gifts we have brought to you for consecration,
that they may become the Body and + Blood of your Son our Lord Jesus Christ
at whose command we celebrate these mysteries.

The gifts I offered were my loved ones … and right there on the altar, we prayed that they may become the body and blood of Christ.

Isn’t that my prayer for them every day – that they love Him and seek Him and enter into that wonderful love relationship with Him? And when they do, they join to Him and become the body of Christ.

And there it was, on the altar, with the literal body and blood that we shared at communion.

I am ever in awe of our God.

 

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