Lots has happened

 Family members with COVID, though my wife and i didn't get it.

My wife instead got bilateral pneumonia.

Need to work, and can't seem to make myself.

Still in relative isolation

 My, it has been a while since I've made time for this blog. It used to be such a vital form of expression.

Thoughts during daily meditation (1)

Does my sinfulness spring from my doubt, or vice versa, or both?

Am I more like my patron during his most famous story or more like the rest of his life? Is my desire for the latter enough to overcome the former? Am I insisting that Jesus show Himself to me before I will believe in Him? Hasn't his work in my life been enough of that?

How can I insist that there is no greater love than this, that I am actually laying down my life, when I withhold my mind and heart?

Suscipe

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,

my memory, my understanding,

and my entire will,

All I have and call my own.

You have given all to me.

To you, Lord, I return it.

Everything is yours; do with it what you will.

Give me only your love and your grace,

that is enough for me.


It's gonna have to be.

(I'm sure I've posted this before but can't be bothered to look.)

Let's understand something

After I have worked my ass off all day and my sciatica pain is all I can stand so I need to recline, I don't appreciate being told that my interests are not on your radar. Okay: enjoy your sappy Hallmark movie. But don't expect me to be any company for you in return.

Easter 2020

Very nice, very blessed family get together. Probably a good thing I didn't count people though.

Good Friday 2020

One of the great blessings of my life each year has been the hour or two I spend in the wee hours of Good Friday morning worshiping the Lord and listening to the Holy Spirit as part of our all-night adoration vigil. We used to hold this in our Eucharistic chapel, but a few years ago in obedience to our leaders we moved to another location, using a tabernacle set up in the school gym. It hasn't mattered to me where we gathered; each year the Lord speaks something new to my heart. In this time of prayer, either alone in His Eucharistic Presence or with a couple of other parishioners, as I reflect on what He has done for me on this holy day when He laid down His life for me and throughout my life's journey, Jesus continues to pour out His life into mine.

It still doesn't matter where we meet.

This has, of course, been the oddest Lent of my life. I stand now at my remote workstation set up downstairs in our home, with the webcam at the Sanctuary of Divine Mercy in Vilnius, Lithuania open on one screen, and this blog open on the other. This annual hour from God gave me the chance to finish this year's edition of Best Lent Ever from Dynamic Catholic, as I caught up on the last couple of chapters of Rediscover the Saints and listened to Matthew Kelly's reflections for the last several days. It hasn't merely been the outside world in disarray this Lent, with the isolation imposed in response to this pandemic. My heart has been astray, too. It has been very difficult to believe that my life has been touched and transformed by God's loving hand. The life that has resulted, in many ways, from decisions that were counter to God's revealed will for us - my decisions and those of others - has seemed to me a past, present, and future burden rather than a precious gift. The love of which I have been an undeserving recipient has not felt like the treasure that I usually know it to be. And I have felt not so much like a pilgrim on a journey wherever my loving God leads, nor even a tourist whose plans in this life have been derailed by circumstances beyond my control, but a prisoner receiving a punishment that his heart believes he deserves.

And yet, as I come before God on this early morning, knowing beyond a doubt that my sinful lack of gratitude makes me undeserving to be present in the Garden with Him, I also have a sense that this is precisely where God wants me to be. This morning, as in every moment, God is not requiring me to be worthy on my merit but only present to His merciful, loving Grace. As I watch just a few of my brothers and sisters on the other side of the ocean come and go in the only adoration chapel I could find online this morning, I am reminded that all of us are just struggling to trust Jesus to provide in His mercy the grace to walk today in His unfathomable love for us.

I will not be receiving my Lord in Holy Communion today, as most of us also have not for the previous several weeks. We know not how long this will go on. But I am convinced that God's mercy is no less at work in this time, as long as we are willing to let Him use our lives for His purposes, whatever our circumstances. This Triduum is different from any other, but God's love and glory are not diminished because of it unless we withhold our hearts from Him who held back nothing from us.

Let us celebrate our Lord's holy Passion and great love on this Good Friday and every day.

He's ba-ack

Since I first started this blog I've never taken a six-month break. Too absorbed with other things. Being in pain all the time makes it hard to sit and write. Sciatica.