Awake!

Bring forth love from your heart,
and you will draw close to the Lord.

My gouty foot is continuing to heal slowly, and my back has been behaving, for the most part. The weather has been cool, breezy and rainy for some time now, but to me it is normal for this time of year.  There is a progression of growth in the trees and wildflowers. It is hard to imagine a river like the Amazon or the Mississippi running so low as to be unnavigable, but so it is. I have prayed that places that need the rain receive it from the hands of the Lord. If the rains return, I hope they make the work of the Holy Spirit abundantly fruitful so that the work of the Lord does not fail to bear fruit in His children.

The more sensitive a person is, the more it hurts, it take little to ignite a firestorm within. While the Lord does not impose much on us, He insists. This may be aggravating, but I hope it brings people to life who have grown hopeless, listless and and cold. We can do something about our coldness, but it takes enough faith to overcome our negative emotions

We need the exercises of the Holy Spirit to keep us alive, literally, and to make us lovers of God. Everything is arrayed against us to discourage and cool the fire of our heart's love.

Do not let it go out. If consenting to some pain will guarantee a lively and loving heart, then we should be eager to receive. We cannot expect all our encounters with God to be blissful and exciting allowing us to wallow in our elation, to the neglect of the Lord. If that befalls us, pray to be brought back to life because you are close to death.

Any time that we allow our hearts to fade, we need the light of God to awaken us and enliven us, and I don't say for a minute that it will be easy. After so much ease, we could use a little austerity.

We might even grow fervent in prayer, asking with the zest of the Holy Spirit to fill us again, so we are aware of how much we need the Lord, who so often professes His own love of us. 

Priests and bishops pf the Church should always be eager to serve their children, because they are, after all, the children of GOD. It is a cold place where a priest does not want to witness any sign of a spiritual awakening, lest he be obliged himself, to be awakened, to shake off the coils of sweet slumber and tedium.

The way to stay alive is to move. It may hurt like all get-out, but the heart that is enkindled by pain to love, turns pain to love and enlivens spiritually.

Some people think their eyes are wide open and the minds and hearts lively and energetic, but you would be surprised beyond enduring, if you knew how Jesus sees, and how much He wishes we could ALWAYS see as He sees. 

He was crucified, died in agony and rose from death the third day to ascend into heaven before their eyes. He also wanted those who watched, to relate the experience, with others.

Somewhere down long ages and dim dusty corridors, people got the idea that the priest did the Sacrifice and we sat motionless and without any feeling, and would be safe from having to do anything strange of a religious nature. we need not touch the people around us, or share the spiritual life within us, or lay hands on those sick and discouraged elders to make them well. Our christianity had all the zest of a plate with a hamburger patty on that was covered in grease. I hope you never get to the point where you think that is normal or excusable, because no one excused the Lord His crucifixion, much less His scourging. What courage did it take see how quickly the fire of His love would diminish in people who sought not to catch on fire in His love. 

Do not wonder that the world is cold, inhospitable or rude and uncaring; it is the inevitable result of our life being allowed to burn down like a like pathetic match stick and go dark and smolder.

There is a secret.

God is always close by with a torch burning with His love to enliven us again and rouse us to vivid life by touching the earth and set the world ablaze. One fruit of thinking about the passion-life of Jesus is that can get lost in His presence, and feel life coursing through us like a 50,000 volt current. Warm to His love, and life will seem less insipid and boring. But there is nothing boring about a perception of His passion in your body, or wondering what He might ask of us. We will only be able to acquiesce to the extent the Spirit moves us to transform dread of pain into the pain of His Sacred Heart which is so full of love.

If you feel cold, draw near to Him in your heart.