Wills

 I can't sleep tonight. It is another one  of those nights it won't happen for me.
It is not unusual anymore, and it has been ongoing for a number of years. It concerns the Will of God and my own will. I have been praying for a young boy of eleven years who was suddenly confronted by a form of leukemia. He under went a bone marrow transplant and was pronounced free of the disease. However, it became necessary to undergo another transplant, but unfortunately after having neen irradiated to eliminate his own immune system, he was vulnerable to any pathogen in the environment capable of getting a foot hold in his young body. After the euphoria of hearing that he was free of leukemia, he came down with a virus that has halted most of his progress.

In this moment, the family, and the boy himself, would like to experience a full and complete healing, including the restoration of his sight, which became compromised after being put in a coma  by the doctors; I don't pretend to understand that, but he eventually came out of the coma and seemed to be making great progress toward the desiired recovery until the vrus struck. Now the family is struggling to accept that their son is slipping away, with too many things wrong, and too few things moving in the right direction.

It is precisely this moment that every human being must come to in some way or another. One must do his best to accept God's Will even when it is contrary to every instinct of human existance entirely.

It came for me through the naive desire to bear the Stigmata or wounds of the Lord. I had been told that on a certain day, in a certain place, I would be granted my wish, but I received nothing but the humiliation I deserved. I was humbled and made to understand that I had become too attached to the consolations of the Lord and that I should endure their absence after having enjoyed them very much for many years. It made me as angry as any one can be, but it pointed out that the Will of God is more important than me.

In a way, I did receive them, but it was not in a bloody way, but in a way in which I must daily accept and surrender into His Will in everything, not simpply in them atter of Stigmata. The desire for Stigmata is to desire the passion of Jesus to glorify Him and to suffer with Him, the redemptive passion. One need not be stigmatized in order to be crucified in my life and living 24 hours a day. There is a paiin far deeper and indistinct which accompanies me now. I still miss the sweet consolations I used to enjoy. Occasionally I do briefly encounter the consolations once in a while, but the sweeter and deeper the consolations are, the deeper and more painful my suffering becomes, and I have had some serious moments to live through.

I only offer to suffer for someone else reluctantly, aware that I don't really want to feel the lance in my side, though I have without particularly enjoying the consolations; peace, yes, there was peace, I was not agitated or afraid, but spiritually something transpired I do not understand. Occassionally I feel pain in my hands feet and side, either all together at once, or in my hands or in my side, even my feet.

One of the elements of the passion is pain. I have been subjected to gout and to shingles and I think they were of equivalent intensity to a hole in the hand or side. But the apparent  impending approach of homelessness because of a beurocratic foul-up, and then there was also the spectre of my brother and sister confronting the same thing, and it gutted me to pray so hard. Eventually, things resolved themselves.

In order for someone to encounter the stigmata, one must really desire it completely, otherwise it would be  impossible to receive them. That is why it is possible for someone to experience them, and clearly anything is possible for God. To receive stigmata one must really desire that when Jesus at the same time desires that one should, and receive it as a gift of pure divine love.

Thus it is possible, but one should not trouble themselves about such a thing, and seek protetction for evil lest one become a victim of evil when in the moment of love one become the victim of grief.

I mention the stigmata because of the pain of losing someone small and dear to death. Obviously either complete healing or death are possible at the same time, but one desires a dear one to live and be happy and not be ground down in misery. To relinquish one so loved at such a tender age is an unspeakble sorrow. Part of the sorrow of death is that it is permanent. Saint Padre Pio underwent several events in which he experienced the passion Jesus in his soul and in his body, and it is difficult to know which hurt him more, the physical wounds bleeding and hurting, or the suffering in his soul which participated in the passion also.

It is certain that one can enter into the suffering of others. It is a great charity when one offers to exchange their peace and comfort for someone else's pain and sorrow, but it is not difficult. My advice to seekers of the Lord is not to worry in advance that one might be asked to enter into someone else's suffering, but to be of equal peace;  to suffer in peace or not to suffer. To be of equal happiness opens the Heart of Jesus in a deep way to swallow one up in joy that one chose His love or one's personal comfort.

To be a contemplative is to be one who encounters God, and an intercessor is to be one whom Jesus can call upon to endure for someone else, enduring their misery so they may encounter peace and quiet in the Lord. There have been many who were intercessors and very happy at the same time, and the coexistance of love and pain is a sign of God's pleasure with a person. The gifts of St. Padre Pio rose from his love which was intensified by Jesus because of his love for others. The healing of penitents was due no doubt because of his deep and entire immersion in intercession for them. It was also the reason so many people turned to him for their physical and spiritual needs. St. Therese of Lisieux is another example of being totally surrendered to God and immersed in His Passion. 

Every saint has encountered the moment of confrontation with the Will of God; every one of them gave God their will and went on to complete their lives in peace.

Now he can rest in peace and total health giving happiness as he always did.