Can anyone really live the Catholic faith? Sure. It's easier to strive for holiness when you have a traveling companion on your spiritual journey, though. Come walk along with this Catholic mom who shares life day by day, both the joys and the sorrows, the saints and the demons, our Lord Jesus Christ and our Blessed Mother. Mary will help us live our Catholic faith!
It is exactly 3 years ago today that I began writing a column as a way to serve Jesus and Mary, and share the truth of our Catholic faith. At that time I considered myself "spiritual, not religious." I was what you might call a "fake it until you make it" Catholic. All I can say is that it sure has worked for me. God's grace is truly amazing. His faithfulness, mercy, and forgiveness is very real. He heals us. You only have to ask the Lord to take the lead, and then take those unsure, wobbly baby steps forward. Our holy mother Mary helps us learn to walk. She's right there, if we want to take her for our own, as St. John did at the foot of the holy cross.
I am very grateful for this new creation that God is making of me. For the good and the bad in my life, too, I am appreciative. The days of my life are like the multiple threads of an elaborate tapestry that God has used to lead me to repentance of my sinful ways and to cooperate with the grace of God in striving for holiness.
Did you know that in these muddled opinions of all sorts, and in these confusing times, there is one thing you can always be sure of? We all have a calling for holiness. I do. You do. One way to get there is to "fake it until you make it." Just try. What better day than today, on Ash Wednesday. Tomorrow, dust yourself off and get up and try again. You may fall a whole lot at first. You may get hurt. Conversion is an on-going process. Like a spiritual toddler, don't give up, keep on. You will learn to walk eventually. You may even find you love to run.
After going to St. Catherine's to participate in the Stations of the Cross, my children and I went downstairs to pray The Divine Mercy Chaplet together at the hour of great mercy on the day of great mercy, in the adoration chapel. The two doors were wide open. It struck me so strange. How wrong this was, not just odd, but as if something was really very wrong.
We looked inside the chapel. Then we went inside, yet the little golden tabernacle was also open, and there was no consecrated host, where Jesus should be present in the appearance of the bread, but was no where to be found. This was not what we had expected. We had anticipated praying there together with our Lord. But He had been taken from us. He was gone.
The emptiness in that room grew within my heart and it was a sad and heavy feeling, even though we all had realized that this absence of the Lord must be a part of our Catholic ritual that we hadn't known of prior to this Good Friday, for we have only been going to Adoration for about 4 months. Boy, talk about the impact of feeling like you are right there along with Mary Magdeline at the empty tomb!
Now the "coincidental" thing about this experience is that I had stayed up until 2 in the morning assisting my son with his new blog and his first post. He wrote about this exact same feeling. Yet I was not familiar with any of the things that he was referring to in his blog post. I marveled about how he felt, but I did not feel it myself--until we came upon our own empty tomb.
And finally, last year’s Easter Candle which has been the source of all the candle light in my Church for special events, was also destroyed. The Easter candle is the symbol of Christ in our world – the pillar of smoke by day, and a pillar of fire by night and it was smashed on the ground, with the final words: “For the light of the world has been shattered.”
With that, our pastor walked away in silence and I felt that empty Gethsemane feeling.
I really wish that every devout Catholic would experience this emptiness without our Blessed Savior. Perhaps it would cause us to better appreciate and love those who do not know God. Of course, atheists do not even know what they are missing. But all the same, we could understand them better. What would we do if we did not have our Lord? We would see things more like those who do not know God do, and some of us have come from that very place. Such an empty place.
