Touching

 

We must be as wise as serpents and

courageous as martyrs.

Every Christian should be aware that when you touch someone to heal them, you are touching their wounds. That in and of itself can deter a person from using a gift of healing, for fear of encountering the pain, and aggravating the suffering, but if one is deterred by these things, they are not healing, they are walking away from Jesus without saying a word, in an act of indifference that is more painful than any known suffering.

Some have the courage to touch, to offer prayer, to encounter the suffering, to enter into the wounds of Jesus, to confront His pain. He does not send us into the world with gifts to entertain us, but to go into the world equipped with a blessing for souls.

And what of that one that is sent out to be immersed into the wounds of Christ? The courage to ask to enter into another's suffering is the grace to set aside an ongoing reality of misery and bless another human being with the peace of wholeness and love. Jesus may be pained still from Golgotha, but He is not deterred by our cries as He imparts Himself into wounds in another person.

We live in an unprecdented din of noise and screams of loneliness and darkness. Jesus sends us to heal, to encounter wounds, so that precisley those people might be restore to peace and healing.

Pray for the healers in the world. In so doing you will bring peace.

Providence

Be at peace. He is providing.

I keep seeing videos of Russia being bankrupt and militarilly washed up, alongside Beijing having collapsed and China on the brink of political upheaval. It is hard to know how all these calamities  will be overcome; they must be overcome in order to continue as civilized human sociaties.

On the other hand, I read with disbelief, the ridiculous things being done to the government and the structures of our societies, and wonder just as much.

Perhaps worst of all, I can't imagine how the rubble can be cleared away and new cities be born from the collapse of the old ones. 

Science Fiction combines with reality to try to portray what will happen, and it is difficult to watch. On the other hand, we just had an anniversary of the nuclear attack on Japan, and see the results of attacks perpetrate by many different countries, on perceived enemies and how it can  be allowed and no possibility of being able to assist the victims. 

How can all this happen and no hope of rising appear? I appeal to Christians to set aside religious ideolgies so they can get in contact with religious reality in which the need for mercy screams at us to care.

It is like the pain in my hands, in precisely the places that would hurt if I were truly crucified. I have the means to palliate the pain, by taking pain  killing drugs. I also have the opportunity to just suffer with it and stand with my arms outstetched to Jesus offering all my heart struggles so to endure, begging for peace, for grace for redemption, hoping someone will care. It is easy to offer a word of comfort because the hard part, actually suffering, has already become part of my life and my life has come to be part of Christ's. 

I may not see, but I can know the way someone suddenly blinded might know what is going on around me. i takes patience and grace, love and an embrace of the God I serve. Sometimes it is I who embrace Him, and sometimes it is He who embraces me. My life is very small; I fear sometimes it is too small to help anyone in any way. Then it becomes clear to me that He is helping as He always has and always will, and I rest a litle in His arms.

Developments

 

From everywhere He reminds us of Himself,
and we must seek Him with all we can.

It is good to keep up with developments in the world, but not to the point that a video will supplant your reliance on Jesus. 

 The universe was created by God for us so we would have a place to live. He gave us intellect with which to chane the world so we might be able to live in it, but not to the extent that any human thought might overshadow God.

Atonement for our offenses against God  in the form of sin cannot oversharow Him to the point that we will supplant His will. The atonement necessary is just that, necessary and will be carried out.

The result of atoning for sin is the chance to show our love for Him and stand at His right side at the judgement. Judgement and a new creation will follow, and by then any alienation from God will be unfortunate.

We can see earthquakes, violent storms, volcanoes and the empty fury of nuclear war which render the earth  uninhabitable. There is no satisfaction to be had in mutual annihilation, and even less satisfaction in having our own will in our mututal wills.

Simplification and love in solitude and silence provide a way to go. There is no joy to anticipate except that rises out of love.

The frustration that modern people experience in life rises from lack of love for others, because God has made our will conditional to His. If our activities in life are  not gentle and purposeful toward the revelation of love for one another, it will remain futile.

Extremes

 

we are dealing with a man who has the  morality of an iguana, and the intellectual capacity of an earthworm.  He threatens to use nuclear weapons on Russia if they do not capitulate in Ukraine. Who does he plan to bomb with nuclear weapons to back up what he says? If anything, this will test what Jesus and Mary mean to us in reality, because these eventualities threaten to get out of hand, and the sole place sanity is evident is in a prayerful heart. Let us pray for peace and the Holy Spirit to influence people's raw emotions which threaten to get out of control and tear down what little is actually still left of civilization.

Treking

Regardless of  how much you wish to be far away from people, you may find that it is impossible. They live on in our memories and awareness.

If we are not engulfed in our own thoughts and consciousness, we are engulfed in something else, which may be very compelling. Such things are called temptations. The love of solitude is a healthy thing inasmuch as we spend our solitude in prayer, and not reminiscing about old friends or fond memories.

The pictures included on this post came from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV9Rc7yOSj0&ab_channel=ASunnyAdventure 

on Youtube. 

I spent quite a a bit of time searching for the photos included, two of which are of the sign and turn off that go to New Camaldoli Hermitage, and the Nepenthe Resort across the highway and down the mountainside a ways. At the moment the monastery is inaccessible because bad weather washed out the road. There is another route that can be taken to the monastery from the south but I don't know the particulars of how to get on the other route to arrive at the monastery. But, if you are looking for silence and solitude, the monastery is a great refuge from the din.

Don't Look Now

 

One wise little owl waiting.

Don't look now, but there is much we do not see, because our world and God's are so different. If He chooses to transcend our deficits, we can be uproarially happy. The soul that can forsake such joy is already a saint and belongs in His arms forever. 

The soul that can taste such happiness and turn right around and then embrace the cross in all its awefulness, is a saint already.

These facts explain the difficulties we have in life. Nothing works properly until we are one with Christ. We blame ourselves and despair of His mercy, until we arrive at the moment when we will lay down and let out our last breath forever.

Inherent in His distantness is the promise of mercy and the forgiveness of sin which all by themselves give us the wherewithall to surrender to death. I say surrender, because the thought of death is too formidable to think.

So much joy awaits the person who trusts in God and lives in spite of every pitfall we encounter. Other men plot taking away everything we have, and God at the same time is waiting to give us everything we need in abundance, and the fools taking still find a need to rationalize there inhumanity as if they don't find excuse enough, they will have failed. Thus, the nazis catalogues as many deaths with tatoos and the confiscation of the belonging of those they herded together to kill.

Don't waste your time looking for reasons; that is the greedy man's duty. He can't rest until he has accounted it all, forgetting that they too will render everything to God who will take our lives and remove them from all that was faulty about us and set us on our feet, completely new and functioning perfectly.

Every time the pain stabs into me again I am immobilized, and permit Him to inflict on me what others need to be saved and to be safe. Without gratitude to God there is no perspective large enough to allow anyone to see the truth hidden so accesbily to all of us, if only we could love enough.

Desolation and Pain

Shine and do not be ecclipsed.

No one wants to hear the deoslation of pain, the walls that cut a person off from life and hide him in a darkness without pity, which does not ennoble, but pushes him down into the dust and shadows of life so that he no longer exists.

God works in the desolation because no one will enter desolation to touch the suffering and dispel it.

God heals in the solitude and the silence which oppresses and prevents the afflcted from speaking, being heard, obtaining God's mercy by being healed.

He heals through love which must shine bright enough to dispel darkness, loneliness and the emptiness of being forgotten and not seen, nor heard in lamentations and suffering.

This is a charism, not of personal power or notoriety, but of moving across the floor pinned under the cross having been altered to be like Jesus dripping in pain and blood, to heal and free the oppressed from the Heart of heaven.

The people have prayed for millenia, for an end of wars, and the peace disrupted by hatred and greed. Now the time has become that when the humble speak, they are no longer ignored but are heard loud and clear, and the wars are extinguished by the great wind of the Holy Spirit's flight across the world, silencing the most horrendous sounds and speaking blessings where there was once only weeping.

The Lord did not wipe away civilization because He wished to demonstrate divine love so the waiting hearts of His children might  might listen and be revived, restored and mad whole again.

This is the work of the solitary guided into the work of peace and silence and solitude. It is not a place one is forbidden from weeping, but a place where crying out is heard by God and the silence is broken by cries of ehaling and restoration. The people may not hear it, but if they do they might be surprised, and edified by the humility of the soul on which the cross has lain unmoved. Pray always, pray now, pray for everyone and the fulfillment of His promises