\nOriginally posted, Sept. 12, 2006<\/em><\/p>\n
ADORATION AND THE MIST, THE VEIL<\/a> WEAKNESS IS SOWN; STENGTH RISES UP One of the readings was from 1 Corinthians, and this line struck me: Weakness is sown, strength rises up<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n Part and parcel of the paradox: when I am weak, then I am strong<\/a>.<\/p>\n Aside from praying for those lost and those who mourn, I prayed for all the folks in my \u201cneed prayers\u201d book \u2013 so many of them, these days, seem to be young mothers with cancer, or children with cancer. I prayed for them, and for my own children, my sons, my elder son\u2019s girlfriend, the teenagers who have come and gone over the past few years or who still frequent our house, my friends who are undertaking new jobs, my husband who could use a new one, people who do hard or dangerous jobs. I prayed for firefighters and cops and nurses and EMT responders and people without jobs, and people without family, and people without someone to love\u2026and everyone<\/em>. I prayed for the terrorists. I prayed for the people who hate our country, who hate our president. I prayed for the people who hate me (whose names are, seemingly, legion.)<\/p>\n Call me presumptuous;<\/strong> I brought the whole world with me, to prayer. I imaged it; cities and states, countries and continents, and prayed and prayed.<\/p>\n And none of this, of course, is because I am holy; far from it<\/em>. Just as faith is a gift, so is prayer \u2013 it is jostled out of us (or first into<\/em> us) via the Holy Spirit because, \u201cwe do not know how to pray as we ought\u2026\u201d<\/a> So, don\u2019t think too well of me, please. I was just looking for a bit of quiet \u2013 and quiet<\/em> is where the Holy Spirit seductively, dangerously lurks \u2013 waiting to both soothe, then ravish<\/a>, us. Why do you think the world is so very noisy<\/a>?<\/p>\n The prayer was long<\/strong> because where I could, I prayed everyone by name \u2013 but even if I could not do that, I still brought it all forward. I felt so ragged and unworthy \u2013 like a slave, or the lowliest servant \u2013 escorting one person after another, one group after another into the presence of the King, each time introducing them thusly: \u201cLord, the one you love is weeping\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLord, the ones you love are overworked and fretful\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLord, the one you love is lonely\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLord, the one you love is under siege\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLord, the ones you love are oppressed\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLord, the ones you love are over-burdened\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLord, the ones you love are slaves to hate\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n I brought everyone in and then receded into the background,<\/strong> bowing low, imagining my own self nose-to-the-ground, almost prostrate and dared not look up, praying, \u201chelp them to comprehend the truth and strength and invoilability of your love, the generosity of your mercy \u2013 show to them the outpouring of your grace, gift them with your healing and let them recognise it and trust in it, for your gifts bestowed are never rescinded. You, Alpha and Omega<\/a>, in whom we live and move and have our being<\/a>, spread forth your peace like sweetest honey to refresh starving hearts and weary spirits. Let your light touch us like consoling balm to soothe and warm our chilled humanity, so that we might be opened to your justice and willing to be made whole. But I am no worthy intercessor, only a faulty and broken vessel trusting in your mercy. Consider not what I deserve in your sight but only the needs of these whom you love, these I bring before you, and for whom I, the lowest servant, plead. Let my evening prayer rise before you like incense<\/a>, to carry these forward. Forgive my sins, especially my failures in love, my sins of omission (for you know those are vast and heavy) and cast them behind your back<\/a> as your prophet Isaiah has promised, and with your grace may I do better. Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner<\/a>, in your name I pray\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n That prayer wouldn\u2019t be everyone\u2019s cup of tea,<\/strong> I know. Some days it wouldn\u2019t be mine, but yesterday it flowed and that\u2019s the direction in which it meandered\u2026and the meandering was good. It made me realize once again that prayer trumps everything.<\/p>\n There are things visible and invisible. A thought is a thing. A hateful thought is a thing, as is a loving one. A hateful thought offered up to an altar of the invisible is hate on a supernatural level, and it can only be confronted and overcome by love on a supernatural level<\/a>.<\/p>\n Prayer is a force and it is real.<\/strong> I came away from Adoration convinced that we will not defeat the enemy (and on the most fundamental level, the enemy \u2013 both within and without \u2013 is hate<\/em>) unless we are willing to use the weapon of real and loving prayer \u2013 faithfully, humbly, daily\u2026and did I say humbly<\/em>\u2026we will not win.<\/p>\n And what is humble prayer? It is not the one that all-too-often tempts us, which runs along the lines of: \u201cDestroy them O Lord, they maketh a blight\u2026\u201d<\/em> Rather it is the one that seeks mercy and trusts God to handle the justice part \u2013 it is, \u201chelp us Lord, help us all, begin with me who am so broken and full of fault\u2026\u201d<\/em> It is prayer that is a \u201csacrifice of joy\u201d<\/a> \u2013 even if the sacrifice is submitted in a groaning song of pain or illness or longing \u2013 for to suffer with purpose, if we must suffer, is real prayer, loving prayer, and it is an offering.<\/p>\n And who gets through life without suffering? Perhaps we all get to suffer, so that we might all make the greatest of prayers.<\/p>\n Now I rejoice<\/a> in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ\u2019s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church<\/em>.<\/p>\n With that rejoicing,<\/strong> then, the gift freely given is nothing less than \u201cthe sacrifice of joy.\u201d To make an offering of your pain is to empower it, as Christ\u2019s own suffering has power; it is to render it into something victorious and undefeatable<\/a>.<\/p>\n Weakness is sown; strength rises up.<\/em> Think about that, pray on it. Consider it in the season.<\/p>\n 3 Though an army encamp against me 4 There is one thing I ask of the Lord, 5 For there he keeps me safe in his tent 6 And now my head shall be raised *** Last night I had the tremendous opportunity to participate in Adoration with the Nocturnal Adoration Society<\/a>, which is different from merely going to an hour of silent Adoration.<\/p>\n The NAS promotes Adoration and specifically works to organize whole nights of prayer, with hourly teams getting together to chant the psalms, read scripture and the writings of the Church Fathers and to simply pray \u2013 it is all prayer, really \u2013 before the Blessed Sacrament. The prayer goes essentially from sundown (the end of the Saturday Vigil anticipating Sunday Mass) to sunrise (the first mass of Sunday), nonstop, and it is remarkable to be in the middle of all of that. Although it is very \u201cbusy\u201d prayer, it is also very focused and intense and at the quiet parts \u2013 during which we silently meditate and offer prayers of praise or supplication \u2013 the silence is\u2026astoundingly rich.<\/p>\n It is silence that is not emptiness, but rather fullness. It is silence that is vibrant, as in vibrational and resonant. It is silence that is utterly alive, and enormously instructive. It is a chunky silence; it builds and feeds. Ristoro e robusto<\/em>.<\/p>\n It is a Milk and Honey<\/a> silence.<\/p>\n Because the scheduling folks in the Society had asked me to (I\u2019m not a member \u2013 it won\u2019t surprise you to learn I\u2019m not much for \u201cofficially joining\u201d things, but they know I participate) I agreed to take the 1-2 AM hour last night, along with 6 other people.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t really want to be there \u2013 I was pleasantly distracted by my secret project<\/a> and didn\u2019t want to have to stop playing with it to pray and think about God. That happens sometimes, doesn\u2019t it? But I have lots of folks on my prayer list, and the world certainly needs prayer, right now, so I went. I schlepped into the church yawning and splashing holy water on myself, chased a phrase from The Marriage of Figaro<\/em> out of my head and slid into my pew. Kneeling, I looked up at the altar and found myself immediately enclosed in the mist<\/em>.<\/p>\n I calls it the mist. Some might call it \u201cthe veil,\u201d except I\u2019ve never actually talked to anyone about it, so I\u2019m just assuming that other folks see this thing, and perhaps they know what it is. It is like a white, glistening cloud that comes down and surrounds a person, obliterating everything else from view. Like\u2026well\u2026a mist.<\/p>\n First time I saw it was the day I met my husband. He walked through a gate and I saw him surrounded by this cloud, and I knew at that moment that I would not be heading into a monastery, but would instead be spending my life with him. (And I\u2019m grateful, because he\u2019s a swell egg!)<\/p>\n The next time I saw the mist was when I was \u2013 very unexpectedly \u2013 helping a man re a suicide situation. Again this mist fell, and I could see nothing but this fellow, and I know \u2013 I know most emphatically<\/em> \u2013 that the help he was rendered was wholly unconnected to me and came from somewhere else. I know this because I know who and what I am, and that helpful creature was not me.<\/p>\n Again the cloud came as I watched an incredible woman generously, disinterestedly and most helpfully console another woman who was in major emotional distress. And that time, when I saw the mist, I also thought\u2026here is Christ, poured forth like a libation<\/em>.<\/p>\n The cloud came again last night, and I was surprised to see it \u2013 so immediate and vast \u2013 because nothing seemed extraordinary or different, and I certainly wasn\u2019t feeling \u201choly.\u201d Because I was tired, it seemed to me God was being a smart-ass: \u201cHeh. So, you made it, eh? Didn\u2019t feel like coming, did you? Well, I\u2019ve been waiting and you\u2019re welcome. Look at what your fellow-adorers have done!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n As I said, Nocturnal Adoration is unusual. The only other time I\u2019ve ever seen the mist while there was when I\u2019d volunteered to take the 5-6AM hour and found that the whole church seemed to be engulfed in this mist \u2013 as though the 10 hours of unceasing prayer and praise, together with the Power of the Blessed Sacrament, had suffused the room, bathed it in this light, or that perhaps the worship space was simply packed with the rising of prayers and the coming and going of our angels moving in and out with us, or up and down as with Jacob\u2019s ladder.<\/p>\n It is fanciful of me, yes. I know it, but when that hour ended, and the priest came out to respose the Host, I watched him cleanse the area with incense (\u201clike burning incense, Lord, let my prayer rise up to you\u2026) and sort of understood why incense has been used for thousands of years, in every culture. The air had become heavy \u2013 cluttered, perhaps, with the human concerns we bring with us and leave at the altar \u2013 and the space had to be cleared of that heaviness.<\/p>\n Incense is used at the beginning and end of a funeral, perhaps to cleanse away all of the heaviness of emotion that comes with it. Perhaps heaviness must give way to lightness, before things can be renewed, or begun again. Perhaps an overnight cycle of prayer becomes heavy, indeed.<\/p>\n I have no idea why I\u2019m writing this, either. I didn\u2019t come away from Adoration with any particular wisdom. I came away from it, precisely as I went in \u2013 chubby, mildly distracted, dyslexic, tired and arthritic. And yet\u2026I was so happy I had gone and Adored. And yes, I had felt so welcomed, so warmly welcomed in the mist.<\/p>\n I heard a nun once say that an hour of Adoration was like an hour of sitting in the sun; you don\u2019t feel any different, but later you realize you got burned. Perhaps today I am pleasantly singed, a little toasty! :-)<\/p>\n SERIOUSNESS<\/strong> is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice, It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one\u2019s self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally, but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity. Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. <\/em>\u2013 G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy<\/em><\/p>\n UPDATE!<\/strong> Oh, now I remember why I wrote this! Because of this post at Brutally Honest<\/a> on the idea that Christianity is Evil. Following a few links I came to one wherein the writer<\/a> declared \u201cNo one has ever known, seen, heard, felt, anything tangible that can be considered \u201cGod\u201d. [sic] If you say you have, you\u2019re lying.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Not so. The Milk and Honey\u2026it is there. And the Holy Eucharist is quite tangible. Christ who promised to be with us \u201ceven to the ends of the world\u201d \u2013 is Present, throughout the world, from time-zone-to-time-zone, in every obscure corner. What was it I said? Oh, yeah\u2026vibrant, resonant\u2026alive.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WEAKNESS IS SOWN; STENGTH RISES UP Originally posted, Sept. 12, 2006 ADORATION AND THE MIST, THE VEIL Originally posted on July 16, 2006 WEAKNESS IS SOWN; STENGTH RISES UP Went to adoration yesterday \u2013 not especially because of the anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9\/11\/01 \u2013 simply because that\u2019s my habit of a Monday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96,163,209],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-liturgy-of-the-hours","category-prayer"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nOriginally posted on July 16, 2006<\/em><\/p>\n
\n<\/em><\/strong>
\nWent to adoration yesterday<\/strong> \u2013 not especially because of the anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9\/11\/01 \u2013 simply because that\u2019s my habit of a Monday afternoon. As I had planned to, I prayed the Office for the Dead, in remembrance of\u2026well, of so many. Of my brothers and brother-in-law, of the victims of 9\/11, our lost soldiers, the civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan \u2013 the families of all the dead. \u201cAll things are alive in the sight of their king\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
\n\u201cLord, the one you love is sick\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n
\nmy heart would not fear.
\nThough war break out against me
\neven then would I trust.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nfor this I long,
\nto live in the house of the Lord,
\nall the days of my life,
\nto savor the sweetness of the Lord,
\nto behold his temple.<\/p>\n
\nin the day of evil.
\nHe hides me in the shelter of his tent,
\non a rock he sets me safe.<\/p>\n
\nabove my foes who surround me
\nand I shall offer within his tent
\na sacrifice of joy.
\nPsalm 27<\/p>\n
\nADORATION AND THE MIST, THE VEIL<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n
\nPoster available at catholicposter.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n