"His love is so strong…"

In the comments section here, Joseph Marshall says I am being prodded to write about my experiences on retreat.

I suspect that is correct, but I don’t think it’s time yet. I’ll know when it’s time because I’ll be writing it, unable to resist. For now, I am still processing it all.

I’m having difficulty articulating it because the Love -it was blinding, mesmerizing, all-encompassing, warm, delightful- I still don’t have the words. Last night I wrote to my Li’l Bro Thom, “I still have a long way to go before I can articulate what I learned there, in the amazing, tender presence of Him.

Him. It was while I was on retreat, prostrate before the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, awash in that otherworldly Presence (privileged to have such access 24 hours a day) that I very naturally began to refer to Him as “His Majesty.” Teresa of Avila always used the phrase and I always wondered about it. Now, suddenly, I knew. I had had a glimpse of what it was to be in the Presence of the Eternal Majesty, and it took away all of my resistance, all of my words. I surrendered, gave it all, understood the illusion that I had anything to give, and the paradox therein; that God never takes away a gift given, but accepts the surrender of everything by gifting even more.

It was because of what I learned (all of which I still do not know) on retreat that I was compelled to make this defense of the Holy Eucharist, and even I was surprised at my language, my conviction and my use of the phrase, “His Majesty.” I was surprised, but I also understood; I can call him nothing less and it is still a wholly inadequate descriptor.

I am currently reading a book on Catherine of Siena, which I have been asked to review, and also reading the Autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila. Teresa writes about the life of prayer and the gifts His Majesty wishes to bestow, and remarks that some -by the mercies and pleasure of the Lord alone- manage to learn in an hour what take others a lifetime. In her downright way, she makes a rueful acceptance of the fact that some of those she taught and counseled understood in weeks what she did not know after 20 years of prayer, and then Teresa helplessly, adoringly, praises God for doing His own will.

I remembered Teresa’s observation when I read this story of filmwriter Joe Eszterhas’ dramatic conversion experience:

With serious habits of smoking (since age 12) and drinking (since age 14) plaguing him after a diagnosis of throat cancer in 2001, Eszterhas felt impending doom. Last year he recounted in the Washington Post’s “On Faith” site about collapsing on the side of a street. “I cried and begged God to help me,” he wrote, “. . . and He did. I hadn’t prayed since I was a boy. I had made fun of God and those who loved God in my writings. And now, through my sobs, I heard myself asking God to help me . . . and from the moment I asked, He did.”

He reported his throat doctor told him seven years after the surgery that I am “cured…..That my throat tissue has regenerated so remarkably that even a doctor examining my throat wouldn’t be able to tell that there was ever cancer there.” The doctor, who had removed about eighty percent of the writer’s larynx, called this “a miracle.”

Eszterhas asked: “Why did God save the life of man who had trashed, lampooned, and marginalized Him most of his life? Why did He take the time and the trouble to save me?” It sure wasn’t on account of his professional body of work. Quite the opposite. “His love is so strong that it was even able to open my rusty old closed heart.”

“His love is so strong…” It makes all things new. It creates and recreates, it permeates, it builds and renews.

His love is so strong that it breaks through all of our barriers – the physical ones (how many women do you know who have gotten pregnant even while using birth control?) and the spiritual ones, and even the intellectual ones. Those intellectual barriers may well be the most fortified and resolute because they are mortared with pride (which is the Evil’s handiest tool) and then fed on hurt and fear (Evil’s fruitful gardens).

“His love is so strong…” I read it and my eyes grow moist. Yes. I know it. His love radiated down from what my human eyes perceived to be a piece of bread, what my heart and spirit knew to be so much more, and for a brief time it bathed me in the warmest, most caressing Light, and everything became different. Nothing is what it was. In the Light, the shadows and illusions fall away and you stand in the only Reality, the Completeness, the All-in-All. There is nothing else.

Oh, God, what I have seen, and still I am so wretchedly connected to this world, this earth, this thing, this me – still so entwined in my faults which are like clinging vines, ever dragging me down and back to where I would rather not be. I cannot even begin to write it; I haven’t the words, myself, so you will have to help me because I am helpless.

Not yet. I can’t write it yet; still processing. Still needing prayer and prayer, and prayer.

The other day, I got an email from a Catholic cleric who had just been dealt a humiliation by a very thoughtless pastor. In his angry, frustrated state, he went to the church, where he had the immense privilege of officiating at Benediction -that means that at the end of the Expostion of the Blessed Sacrament, he donned the humeral veil (explained beautifully here) and raised the monstrance containing the Host -where Christ is Present, under the appearance of bread- and then made the Sign of the Cross over the congregation. He assisted Christ in making this powerful blessing. How does one assist in the blessing of the faithful; hold Him in ones hands and not feel inclined to bash all anger, all fear, all frustration, temptation, hopelessness, upon the cross of Christ -which can bear all things- and simply consent; simply allow Him to recreate, revive, restore to make everything, everything, new.

His Majesty will do it; He will not wait to discuss all the ways you have failed Him -there is time for that, an Eternity for that, later. If you allow Him to, if you let Him in, he will change you, and bathe you in his immense tenderness. If you are laying in a gutter, like Eszterhas, you can call on Him, trusting in the words of Isaiah 38:17: “…you have saved me from the pit of destruction, when you cast behind your back, all of my sins.”

Yes, it is a mystery. It is beyond all of our knowing, which is why -no matter how tempted we are to lay with the Pharisees- we ultimately cannot. We must, ultimately err on the side of mercy, because mercy is what we all seek, and leave Justice to the One who may be trusted to know what that is.

I hate my humanness which keeps me so earth-bound, so hide-bound to my stubborn judgments, my weaknesses, my sins. I love my humanness, because it forces me to trust His Majesty, and all of his ways, which are all-Good. I will stumble. Every day I will stumble. Every day I will need forgiveness. Every day, I will understand my need to surrender because I am so helpless, so useless. Every day I will need pardon. Every day, will be the same day, as He is the same, even though everything is different. Especially because everything is different.

“His love is so strong…”

As evidenced by all of this blather, I have nothing to add to those 5 words.

Related:
The Integrity of the New Testament
Patrick O’ Hannigan on what Catholics get right and wrong
Flowers before His Majesty