Consoling the Heart of Jesus, <\/em>which fits the retreat it gives exactly.<\/p>\nI\u2019ve been reading it prayerfully, which is to say that I often pause in my reading to pray about the ideas I\u2019m encountering. To be honest, the whole idea of me, consoling Jesus, almost hurt me, and not in a selfless, good way. It upset me in a selfish me-me way.<\/p>\n
You see, I\u2019m the mom, which is to say that I\u2019m the consoler. I console my mother on almost a minute-by-minute basis. Without my constant care and tending, she slips immediately off into deeper dementia. Clinging to me helps her also cling to the rest of the real world. I console, on a less fraught basis, my kids, my husband, my sister, who was widowed a year ago and is quite ill with MS.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t so much console as shield my Mama from the anguish of dealing with the family drug addict.<\/p>\n
The only person I have to console me is Jesus. I go to Him for consolation many times a day.<\/p>\n
When I prayed, I told Him that, in almost the same words I wrote here. I am the consoler for so many people Lord, and You are the only One Who consoles me. If I have to console You, too, where will I go for me?<\/p>\n
As I was praying this, the verse, If you have done it for the least of these, you have done it for me <\/em>entered my mind. I took that as an answer to my prayer. Consoling Jesus \u2014 for me, at least \u2014 is consoling Mama and the people around me.<\/p>\nI\u2019m telling you this to give you a sense of what I\u2019m going through right now, to help you understand why I can\u2019t come back to this blog just this minute and write about the ugliness of the world. I need rest from the world of hate and death.<\/p>\n
I am grieved to the core by the monstrous misery of our world, and my only consolation is Jesus.<\/p>\n
That is why I\u2019m sharing this with you now.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to Blog Different for the month of November. I seriously considered not blogging at all for a month and just going off to pray. But I want to talk about Jesus. I want to write about Him.<\/p>\n
So this month, I\u2019m calling a King\u2019s X on most of the things I usually write about. I am also going to back away from writing so much. I\u2019m going to take a month-long retreat to pray and seek the consolation of Christ and I will, as the Spirit leads me, make you part of that retreat along with me.<\/p>\n
This has happened to me before; this lost, flattened, need to go away and just be with Christ. I imagine it happens to you sometimes, too. I\u2019ve learned that I can trust Him with these times. He will bring what He wants out of them and it will be an enormous surprise to me what it is.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, I have one favor to ask. Will you include me in your prayers? Also my Mama and my family, including the poor family drug addict. Rest assured that I pray for all of you on a regular basis.<\/p>\n
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Dear friends. Don\u2019t take that as an indifferent salutation. Take it as a heartfelt greeting. Dear friends, dear brothers and sisters in Christ. I need a break from writing about ISIS\/Ebola\/Politics. I need to spend time with Jesus. I\u2019m going to review the book I\u2019ve been using for my do-it-yourself retreat in a couple of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,6781,726,6797,5185,5214,1],"tags":[7022,7006,7021],"class_list":["post-24914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic","category-ebola","category-following-christ","category-isis-2","category-new-evangelism-2","category-new-evangelization-2","category-uncategorized","tag-consoling-jesus","tag-religious-retreat","tag-sorrowful-jesus"],"yoast_head":"\n
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