ELISHEBA BLOGLaura, Ivonne, and Rick
write about their lives in the Eucharist. |
ELISHEBA BLOGLaura, Ivonne, and Rick
write about their lives in the Eucharist. |
Dearest Eucharistic Family. In 1999 I became a member of the Legion of Mary. We had weekly meetings, rosary, and reports of good works with prayers to unite us. Most importantly a bond of love was formed with the presidium members as we worked together for Christ’s mission of His Church through the heart of our Blessed Mother. Our Legion president was a humble man, docile, and carried a gentleness of spirit. I remember hearing “his story” and I loved him even more. This gentleman lost his only son, a young boy around twelve years old, and his wife soon after. The boy was hit by a car while riding his bicycle, his wife became ill. Close to her death at the bedside of his wife, sharing his grief and expressing to her: “What am I going to do? How will I survive? How will I go on living?” The wife took hold of his hand and said, “Listen to me, you will go to the Church, join the Legion, and work for Mary (our mother) she will take care of you. She will keep you busy, and you will be OK”. And so it happened, a witness of love and a remarkable life of the president of the Legion was carried out until his old age and death. Amazing grace, by divine intervention and consenting to God’s will birthed a witness of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus and to follow Him. Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, invites us into the moving mystery of His love. Jesus gave us an example the night before He died.
Sharing in the grief and in the joy of others, uniting to their life story strengthens the Body of Christ, this act keeps the Body functioning well. We fall in love with our brothers and sisters of grace united through the beating heart of the Eucharist. This love is the love which enables us to live. We hold one another in the grace that saves us. It is important to remember.
Jesus invites us to remember. In the Eucharist, we remember the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our lives are made one with Jesus in the Breaking of the Bread. How blessed we are to place upon the Altar of God daily all that we live for, all that we die for, and all that we hope for. To live a Sacramental life is a blessing for a joy of completeness and a gift to pray is found. An activity of life in the breadth of the Holy Spirit fills the house, our house, our spirit, our lives. I thank God for the Legion of Mary, it led me to later become a Lay Associate of the Blessed Sacrament, in the Charism of Saint Peter Julian Eymard, to make God’s love greatly known in the Eucharist.
It is love that enables us to hear others. A daily communicant from my parish speaks another language than me. We embrace one another daily with a sincere smile from each of us. Our words are very few to understand. Yet the heart unites us so deeply in all that we believe, all that we witness. GOD’S LOVE IS A MYSTERY. WE WALK TOGETHER IN FAITH and profess the witness of one another's lives, we never forget, that LOVE IS ETERNAL.
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A priest once shared a story with me. One Sunday, after Mass, a young child approached him and asked him a question. “Father, what’s the word?” He did not know what the child meant, so he said, “What word?” The child then said, “The one that will heal my soul.” And the priest remembered the words we say before Communion, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” The Word became flesh and dwelt among us… When God speaks, reality is changed. “Let there be light!“ “This is my Body.” “This is my Blood.” How often do we ask God to speak His Word to us? How often do we, like that little child, have the understanding that truly, just one Word from God will heal our souls? Beloved… this is the word God has been speaking recently to my heart. And, as I listen and try to receive it, I realize that there are parts of my heart that are having a hard time with that. So, He repeats it again, and again, and again… in a different circumstance, in a different place. There are places in my heart where God’s Word echoes and fills the space, and receiving a soothing balm, my soul assents. Yet, other places feel blocked with something I can’t yet name. I ask Jesus to help me listen to Him, to help me believe the Truth about myself, “Lord, say the word and my soul shall be healed.” He listens, and He adds a word… my beloved.
Do you believe you are the beloved? Can you believe this with all your heart… with all your soul… with all your mind? Or are there places in your heart where you doubt this? Are there places in your heart where a lie is what you believe? If so, then there are places in your heart where you are not yet able to fully love.
I remember when my kids were little that if they wanted to give us a gift, they needed to get the money first from us. Yet, even if technically I had purchased my own gift, I was delighted to receive what they had purchased with love. It is the same with God. We can only love Him with the love He has given us.
This is how Jesus goes forth in His mission… grounded in the Father’s love. All He is and all He does, is Him returning love for love. We are the Body of Christ. We are the beloved of God. When parts of our hearts are not able to receive this love, we are not able to fully love. When we don’t act from our identity as a beloved son or daughter of God, we are rejecting the love of God. But God is always the same. The One Who loved us into being loves us now with the same love. Nothing can separate us from His love.
Lord, say the word… and help us believe.
A priest friend once told me: “Our eyes are how we see the world, but the eyes only produce images, impressions of the light on the world. Interpreting the images is what 'seeing' is. Both our intellect and our soul give meaning to the images we see to gain insight from them, but too often, we just see with the eyes of our intellect, as most of the world sees. We have to learn how to see better with the eyes of the soul, for that is how we gain wisdom”. In the first letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul tells us to pray to God for a “spirit of wisdom,” that is, for the Holy Spirit’s wisdom to come forth to us. From our relationship with the Holy Spirit, active in our lives, we gain both the exercise of the theological and moral virtues and the use of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Among the gifts that we receive are wisdom, knowledge, understanding, and awe. These gifts are directly related to each other, for they pertain to “seeing.” Paraphrasing St. Thomas Aquinas, the gift of wisdom is to be able to see the work of the hand of God in all things, in our lives, and in the world. If we use St. Paul’s words from Ephesians 1, wisdom is to “have the eyes of our hearts enlightened.” We are enlightened. The gift of knowledge is recognizing our purpose as children of God and how He relates to us. This is that we “may know what is the hope that belongs to His call”. We are able to focus. The gift of understanding is the ability to comprehend how we are to live as followers of Christ. The moral issues become apparent. We are able to discern. Along with this wisdom, knowledge, and understanding, we can also receive the gift of awe, which is to see and comprehend “the surpassing greatness of his power for us who believe, in accord with the exercise of his great might.” We are able to stand in awe of the greatness of God. I have always been more intellectual than anything else. I have always strived for “understanding” as a means to better myself and to help others. I often, mistakenly, thought that knowledge and understanding would inevitably lead to “wisdom.” That is not the case, though it helps. For the true gift of wisdom to be active in our lives, we must cozy up to the Holy Spirit. We must strive to see the world a little differently, through the eyes of our soul and through the eyes of Christ. The eyes of the soul are opened by the virtues, and living the virtues invariably leads to a life of Grace. Grace is a gift, just like the gifts of the Holy Spirit. If we live a life of Grace, then our life itself becomes a gift, an offering to our Lord. More than anything, we must strive to live in this world with virtue. That is what makes ordinary people into saints. Extraordinary, heroic virtue comes after common, ordinary virtue has become a regular part of our lives. Many Saints recognized the role of the mundane and ordinary in this world. When seen through the “eyes of the soul,” the mundane becomes the foundation of our heavenly work on this Earth.
Let us pray: Lord, you are the creator of all that is seen and unseen. You have left us your Holy Spirit to guide us toward the path to Heaven. Help us then to be open to the promptings of your Spirit, that through His guidance we may achieve a virtuous life. Help us see the world as you see it, so that our love may be like yours. May your precious gifts to us also be a gift for our brothers and sisters, and that our eyes be opened by your Grace. Amen.
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AuthorsWe are Ivonne J. Hernandez, Rick Hernandez and Laura Worhacz, Lay Associates of the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament, and brothers and sisters in Christ. |