Messages I Needed to Hear

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I think God’s being more obvious than usual in my life. Either that or I’m learning to hear him better.

Three things in the past week have made me think this. First was the presentation given Sept. 30 by Carmelite Fr. Thomas Reeves at the Salt Lake City monastery. Sitting there in the back of the chapel, listening to his first presentation, I felt he’d been reading my prayer journal.

As the pages of my journal reflect, I’ve been struggling with the concept of God’s mercy. It’s much easier for me to feel that God is a god of vengeance, of fire and brimstone, of lightening bolts poised to strike whenever my grievous sins cause his anger to quicken.

 This is the heresy of Jansenism, Fr. Thomas explained during his presentation; rather than the forbidding god of my imagination, the God of Catholicism is in fact a loving father who longs for us to call him Abba.

Fr. Thomas challenged those of us at the presentation to “come to a deeper awareness of how loved we are, how precious we are in God’s eyes, and also to be able to see how precious and loved others are in God’s eyes.”

I’m so not feeling precious and loved right now. I feel like a squally 2-year-old, whining and snarling, my only vocabulary words “No!” and “Why?”

But I’m trying to act like a grownup, so on Saturday I pretended I was capable of behaving properly and went to the diocesan deacons’ retreat, where Fr. John Thomas Lane, SSS asked those present to reflect on what justice mean to us right now, and also what thirsts we want fulfilled.

One reason I might be feeling so bratty right now is that the thirsts I want fulfilled are the problems of  abortion and immigration and the death penalty and homelessness and people dying of hunger and the Church sex scandal rearing its head again, this time in France, and Church leaders who can’t be charitable to each other and the degradation of the environment and is there really fraudulent activity on my social security number and why can’t I get to the gym and – well, you get the picture. With all of this, I have no idea how I’m supposed to be a light to the world, but that is in fact what I am called to do. One way to get the strength to do that is to go to Communion, as Fr. Lane said.

The third word from God that hit my ears came from today’s reflection in Give Us This Day. The reflection, written by Fr. Joseph Donders, says, “To have faith means to come down from the donkey of your ordinary, everyday life, to help others, to demonstrate and protest, to work and to study in their favor. It means also to listen to the Lord, to pray and be attentive so [that] all our service [points] in the direction of his kingdom to come.” [Italics original.]

That phrase “the donkey of your ordinary, everyday life” struck me hard, because that’s exactly how I feel right now: mounted on a plodding beast of burden that can’t move any faster than a jerky trot through all these trials and tribulations. But rather than stay on that beast’s back, I am to get down among those who are walking along my path, to focus on them rather than on my own problems.

“We have to serve our neighbor; we have to listen to the Lord,” Fr. Donders’ reflection concludes, and that is a message I need to hear.

Marie Mischel is editor of the Intermountain Catholic. Reach her at marie@icatholic.org.