Mystical Mindset

Recently a young person approached me complaining about the pain in his mouth. He recently got braces. I, never having experienced this all too common adolescent experience, conveyed to him my sympathy, which initially is all I thought I could offer.

He persisted in his pursuit of pontificating about his pain. He proceeded to inform me that the pain must be punishment from God the Almighty. His pain was so unbearable that only the Divine Maker could conjure up this magnitude of malfeasance. His pain clearly had a spiritual awakening for he began to confess his sins to me, "I have not honored my parents!"

On the verge of tears, he continued, "God is punishing me for my sins. Why else would he allow me to suffer as such?"

His tears were real, but not of remorse. His confession, sincere, but not from a contrite heart. And clearly, he was suffering, but it was of his own making. I was wholeheartedly sympathetic, for I too have experienced excruciating pain and endured suffering of my own making. Yet because of this and because he confessed something of repeated daily offense, I knew without doubt there was no contrition in his anguishing acclamations. He was blaming God for his suffering. And who among us has not?

With kergymatic fervor, I proclaimed, "God is not punishing you. God does not punish, He loves."

In teenager fashion, he arrogantly replied, "Then why does he allow me to suffer? If He truly loves me, then He would never allow me to have pain."

I paused, not because I didn't have an answer to his ageless question about the human condition. My pause was to allow what he just said to hang in the air. To allow his deepest thoughts to penetrate through the hardness of his heart. To give him the silence he desperately needed, even if for just a quectosecond. In that silent moment, if embraced, there is no suffering. 

Embrace that silence, for however long you can, and abide in that silent stillness, for as much as possible. Therein awaits, no pain, only comfort. Therein awaits, no suffering, only mercy. Therein awaits, God.

With pain and suffering surrounding, in this silent stillness, your mindset changes. Suffering becomes a blessing because you realize that the pain breaks through your hardness of heart. That moment of healing grace transforms you, for good, if you truly embrace it. In that encounter, you allow God to heal your heart first.

A healing heart is not some success outcome from a catechetical lesson. A healing heart is simply an encounter with the Lord.

The Lord knows your pain. The Lord suffered more than any person. The Lord died for all of us, everyone. The Lord conquered death. Love is victorious! For by His Cross and Resurrection, He has redeemed the world.

Spiritual Warfare

We have now fully engaged the Enemy, and the enemy is looking at us in the mirror of our souls.

"Seeking the ruin of souls" are the last words prayed when asking Saint Michael the Archangel to protect us in our spiritual battle. This is exactly what is occurring among too many of our brothers and sisters.

The Enemy has altered strategy since Christ conquered Death on the Cross. The Enemy knows the end of time is upon us. So we rarely hear or see the obvious possessions in modern times. Demonic possession has become a more sophisticated battlefield, aligned with the signs of the times.

Because of the Church, we have full access to the Real Presence of Christ: Body, Soul, and Divinity. Therefore the Enemy must take on a new perception of deception. Yet the Enemy really has always attacked us essentially in the same manner as done from the beginning.

The image of Man has been twisted and turned inward, just as the Enemy did in the Garden. The difference today is that the possession is not easily apparent as prior to the Age of the Apostles. The possession today is conpletely artificially good and beautiful. 

The deception of the Enemy is our belief that the image we create artificially is authentic because that image is self-made. Each time a person self identifies as something self-created, the Enemy has taken ground within the soul of that person. Possession of the soul becomes self-fulfilling and there lies the greatest spiritual warfare of our time.

In many ways, the Age of Enlightenment became the Possession of the Mind. That is, our thinking led to the heresy of atheism, the rejection of God in favor of our own arbitration and governance. The Law of God was replaced by the laws of Man. And the Will of God quickly became the will of the majority.

Our great Republic built on Western Tradition AND Judeo-Christian values is nearing its end, if we let it. The restoration of our Republic requires a renewed fervor in Western ideals. 

Even more essential to restoring our Republic is the victory over our current spiritual possession. We must believe in God, the One True Creator and Almighty whose Son died and rose again. And whose Spirit is alive in the Church. We must attack the artificially generated self-creation image of Man and depend upon the truth, beauty, and goodness of God creating each of us in His image.

From the Love of God the authentic nature of each person as either a man or a woman in the making. From the Will of God comes our inalienable rights and those laws we are to choose for governance. And from the Divine Mercy shall come victory over our Spiritual Warfare today. 

Emptiness

Emptiness is not nothing.

Emptiness is a void, the fullness of loss. We know this to be true when we experience any loss, the greater the loss, the deeper the absence.

Emptiness is not a quantity but a quality. Emptiness is more like the impact of volume, that is, the "weight of" something missing not the "accumulation of" something lost. Emptiness is something more than we can handle because that some thing/one lost became part of us and now we are lacking.

This is why darkness is often associated with emptiness. The lack of light in space leaves a void of what we perceive as nothing but that darkness is truly the void of light, and we experience something real in the absence of light, we experience darkness as empty space, a void of lacking that what is necessary for living.

Christ calls us to be children of the light because we are to be filled with the Spirit of God. We belong to God the Father. Just as the Son and the Father are one, we too are to be one in the Son through the Spirit.

There is no emptiness in God, no void, for God is Light, God is Love. And in Him who is All in all, we shall never be empty.

This Cup of Pain

Until recently,  I never truly understood the heart-wrenching scene at the Garden of Gathesemane. And perhaps I still don't, yet I believe I do understand a bit more because of recent events.

Jesus enters the garden with three prominent disciples of his, Peter, James, and John. Jesus goes off to be in prayer and we learn from the Gospel of Saint Matthew, the following:

Then [Jesus] said to [Peter, James, and John], “My soul is sorrowful even to death. Remain here and keep watch with me.” He advanced a little and fell prostrate in prayer, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will (Matthew 26:38-39).

Jesus pleads three times for the Father to let this cup pass if it be His will. Yet the Father permits this Cup of Pain to remain. While in the garden, Jesus experienced such pain that tears of blood ran down His face. He then endured the greatest pains of human existence: the pain of the Cross: betrayal, rejection, humiliation, torture, and finally execution. 

Bizarre yet brilliant how God's plan unfolds in the Passion of our Lord, Jesus Christ. The Father permits pain to remain, even for His beloved Son, so that we may understand the depths of His sacrificial and redemptive love for us. God suffers like we suffer, separated from Himself just as we are separated from Him. Only because God is Trinity can this be possible. Only through God witnessing to us the reality of the worse pain, separation from Him, can we acknowledge the source of all pain.

Pain is never the root cause but always a symptom--an outward sign of something within. Scripture teaches us that the root cause of pain is sin, and its ultimate root cause is evil. Just as God permits pain, He permits sin and evil, not because He desires evil upon us, but because He desires us to turn away from sin and return back to Him. So the pain we experience in this earthly life reminds us that there is something wrong with us: We are not with God as He created us to be. We do not love as we ought. God created us for Love and the path to return to Love is that Way of the Cross, which always includes this Cup of Pain. We must acknowledge this Cup of Pain, accept it so as to accept the reality that we are not fully with God.

The Church teaches that there is such a thing called material evil (CCC 309-311). The existence of material evil explains the mortality of our bodies and by extension our physical, emotional, and mental brokenness. Sadly we continue to deny the fragility of our existence. Modern science profits on the continuous denial of our fragility, brokenness, and mortality. In doing so, we now seek to self-identify as anything but mortal, fragile, or broken. 

We seek not redemption but renewal. We seek this modernist, renewed identity that continues to seek not the Will of the Father but our own will. And this is contrary to who we are.

We are not made for ourselves, but for God. We are in a "state of journeying" (CCC 310). God permits the Cup of Pain to remain until we are fully with God in eternity.