In the end there is only one choice - one choice that will lead us home. Home is the spiritual space we occupy in the heart of Christ; our very necessity to plug into the life force of God. We can hide the light of Christ in our life - but only HIS light can lead us to ourselves and reveal our true selves in our tests and trials of the world - only Christ's light is our compass, anchor, center and DNA of our being. Our body is merely a vessel for our soul and while a body can wander in darkness - powered by anger and temptation - it will die by the dark and decay - because the body is not the being - the soul is our true self and our soul is created in God and in Christ we have the light of our souls and the candle of ourselves created by God who is the only creator and without leaning into God we might live in the world but we shall surely die.
It is so easy in this fractured world to lose sight of God's grace and light. Often times we feel the darkness when we search for difficult answers and discernment, left only with what we see narrowly as unanswered prayers. Many of us work in jobs where we are belittled and degraded only to struggle to pay our bills and find time for our families - where is the peace of Christ in crisis times? Where is the healing from stress and dis-ease?
Job battles this - for he is honorable and faithful and yet in his humanity cannot see the perspective of God's grace in such tragedy...and yet Job instead of turning away from God - demands explanation and communion with God - knowing in the disarray and uncertainty - My redeemer lives. We like Job struggle between the heartache and hardship of life's bitter suffering and the joyful eternal presence of God's redeeming grace - this is an intersection and crossroads where we find Christ.
Christ is always with us - Christ is always present - Darkness could never overcome the light because even one single flicker of light bleeds out the darkness - the problem is we often fail to settle our restless hearts and find rest in God. We look to the darkness in ourselves and our broken world and lift up in angry voices: Where are you Father, Where are you God? In this cry we are not so much seeking to find the material - although our flesh focuses on that manifestation - what we truly want is to hear the Lord whisper or shout 'I'm here, do not be afraid' in our hearts and ears - we hunger not for the material - even in trouble and distress but we hunger for God - for God to create a new life in us.
I have been praying desperately for financial breakthroughs to help me move into an apartment without mice and to find a job where I can work in safety. This desperation is rooted not so much in the present than in the past and the collision of the immediacy of the two intersecting.
What do I mean by this intersection? A crossroads between hunger for the temporal and the eternal, the act of letting go and accepting the hand of Christ and his light as the lamp for our feet and the map we will follow - without counting the costs. So often we allow one dark night to signal the darkness of all our life - we lose perspective. I have endured a lot of pain and hardship from being disinherited by my dad and abused by relatives - failed dreams and pursuits left me always rising like a phoenix - when you rise from tragedy only to feel the darkness of another stressful situation caving in - you lose the hope to break free. The perspective becomes so distorted you lose the sight to see God's possibilities and God's possibilities through Christ are so much bigger than our own tunnel vision. We lose our creative edge and our ability to listen and wait on the Lord, we lose our active creativity by also feeling as if God has left this cross and we must suffer through for the sake of suffering...
God only uses sufferings to draw us nearer to Him. We cannot lose sight that we are not to circle around in endless darkness but that every winding, difficult road is a road leading us to HIM and we can find peace even in the darkness of the world - God is our light - not always by miraculous expectation but by persevering spirit and care. Christ Himself endured all the trials and sufferings of the world...not only to act as a perfect sacrifice, freeing us from sin, but also to remind us that God is willing to suffer in love by walking beside us in our suffering us - though suffering may kill our flesh - if our soul stays anchored in God - the light of Christ - we will never lose eternal hope and we will never lose life - if we keep ourselves rooted in God through Christ - even if we are stripped of every material piece of possessions we own - God is bigger than material - God will not leave us - nothing of this world is greater than God and everything we have and are created to be for our highest good is in God and in Christ we can not only find redemption but we can uncover the mystery of our souls - so often we ignore who we really are - the DNA of our soul - which is God and that is why we hunger so desperately for God - Christ is our very being - for our Creator is a Mighty King and loving father.
Today in the midst of a novena begging God for mercy on my finances, my purse was stolen. I retrieved most of the contents - but all my cash until payday ($20) was gone - I thought how could God do this to me - I then start to wonder if I am taking on sins of my fathers and am I being punished by God. And while God refines sinners through justice, God is merciful - God would never harm us - we have to see His light even when our enemy wages battle against the light. We cannot give up on God because by giving up on God we give up on ourselves and are therefore dead - dead by sin because sin is a separation from God and in forsaking God we forsake our souls - who were created and long to be loved by and to love God.
Often times in trial we look to the cross and to Christ's suffering as I did during the Sorrowful Mysteries Rosary - we find Christ's humanness and divinity in one and yet somehow when times get tough it is easy to think - God couldn't care otherwise he'd rescue me from this - but God has been our victor in Christ - we need perspective and even Christ during the passion - in His humanity was tempted fiercely by the human loss of sight:
In the Agony in the Garden, Christ feels forsaken, alone and is betrayed and desolate - he like us in prayer cries out for mercy and to remove the suffering and while God will hear our calls for mercy we also must admit - sometimes suffering is a road leading us into closer communion to God. If my job situation had not gotten so bad eight months ago that I cried out: Why God? I would not have been lead to a spiritual deepening through the power of the rosary - which God led me to through backdoors and unexpected turns - God's prayer for help came not in winning the lottery but in power of prayer.
Christ HIMSELF struggled to keep moving forward to God and dying by the flesh as he struggled by the weight of the cross and cried out, Abba why have your forsaken me and yet like a child shouting in peril for a parent - the child trusts the love of the parent, even in fear to trust in the saving grace. The Psalms of David reflect so richly human relationship to God, the pain of our separation by sin and the effects of sin around us and our innate desire to find God, to be in God's presence and to trust in God - even when the only trust we have is to argue and beg and hope desperately.
Desperate hope is always resurrected into faith in God's hands - God may seem silent - but He speaks and the History of salvation is now and forever a grace he will not forsake and His light through Christ, rest assured will never burn out.
It is when we start looking for the light in our darkest spaces, the times when life seems better off dead - that God works to resurrect us and remake us - stripping us of the sins of the world inflicting suffering on His creation and in our most desolate and forsaken desert spaces He works on our souls.
Sometimes we don't see God's work in the desert but God is present and sometimes the biggest battle is to be still and trust in God. I know trust is hard - it is hard to hold a candle in the wind and yet God will not be extinguished - we may choose to hide in darkness but HIS light will never be extinguished.
Christ crying out: My God, my God why have you forsaken me was crying out for communion with God, Our Father - our own true hunger for God when we are the one's by the flesh who have forsaken Him - yet in this cry - though we feel desolate - Jesus continues to search for the Father - if Jesus had given up the need of the Father in this hour of trial then he would have not called out to God...
It is interesting to note that Christ is not only fulfilling prophecy from Isaiah in this statement but as the heir of David is calling out all of creation in the Psalm of David - Psalm 22 - where David demands to feel God's presence in His trials - yearning for God knowing if God has forsaken Him, then he has nothing - the Psalm starts out with the bridge of anger and desperation before finding hope and trust in God - even in the unknown, even amidst the darkest of times...
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish?
2 My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, but I find no rest.[b]
The psalm then shifts to rejoicing even in desperation as David realizes the Lord our God is always with us and is our only end and the source of everything...
All the ends of the earth
will remember and turn to the Lord,
and all the families of the nations
will bow down before him,
28 for dominion belongs to the Lord
Christ is reminding us to live a life searching for God and being content to feel the presence of God and rejoice in that gift - even if the kingdom seems far - Christ is here. He is the light of the world.
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