At the charismatic prayer meeting I go to in Hot Springs, Arkansas where I am now living there are songs played on a tape recorder with the theme of Jesus loving us like a bridegroom loves a bride. I was thinking of the theme of Vatican II as an age of the laity. Here was what I came up with. It used to be that mostly only nuns and monks experienced bridal mysticism…or where known as having this experience, whereas now the thoughts in St. Bernard’s commentary on the Song of Songs are being experienced by lay people, if not conceptualized so beautifully as he does. And that same with Adoration where before mostly only contemplative consecrated had this opportunity, now it is widespread on a parish level where lay people experience these graces without ever having read a word from the great tradition of contemplative writings.
I am enjoying Arkansas style humor. For example, at a big grocery store, an old guy with no teeth and scraggly dirty hair is pushing his cart up to the cashier. The jaunty middle-aged bagger calls out: “Heh, grow your hair a little more and you can curl it!” The old guy grins and says: “Since I stopped working I stopped cutting my hair.” Next the bagger is packing the old man’s cat food cans: “Heh, man, be sure you don’t feed this to your dog or he will bite you bad!”
It is the birthday of my great grand-daughter, Teresa. So much preparation of decorations, gifts ranging from a trampoline to a Cinderella bridal dress and glass slippers. My granddaughter and her husband were exhausted from setting this all up for the party the night before.
I said: Jesus sacrificed on the cross to literally open the gates of heaven. Now the priest sacrifices so much to be able to give us a foretaste of heaven in the Holy Mass. And then you, in the domestic Church, make sacrifices to give your little daughter a kind of foretaste of heaven in this beautiful party.
It happened that someone close to me with whom I frequently argue about Church issues was involved in a pathetic incident where she felt very vulnerable. I had such a rush of love for her because she was vulnerable instead of combative. Then I thought, and I think it’s the Holy Spirit, in purgatory we will be vulnerable – unable to make excuses for our sins and defects, with no bravado left and, certainly not, smugness! And that will enable our “victims” who are also there to forgive us and that will expand their hearts to prepare them for heaven, where we cannot go until there is nothing but love in our hearts.
I said: Jesus sacrificed on the cross to literally open the gates of heaven. Now the priest sacrifices so much to be able to give us a foretaste of heaven in the Holy Mass. And then you, in the domestic Church, make sacrifices to give your little daughter a kind of foretaste of heaven in this beautiful party.
It happened that someone close to me with whom I frequently argue about Church issues was involved in a pathetic incident where she felt very vulnerable. I had such a rush of love for her because she was vulnerable instead of combative. Then I thought, and I think it’s the Holy Spirit, in purgatory we will be vulnerable – unable to make excuses for our sins and defects, with no bravado left and, certainly not, smugness! And that will enable our “victims” who are also there to forgive us and that will expand their hearts to prepare them for heaven, where we cannot go until there is nothing but love in our hearts.
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