When I got to mass early today, I will admit that I had trouble focusing at first. I found that I was easily distracted, kept getting annoyed by small noises, and couldn't find that “Ahhh,” moment where everything melts away because I'm in the presence of Christ.
Then I remembered a conversation about approaching Christ that I'd had the night before with T. I was recounting the intricacies of what stops me from feeling consoled by Christ, and she said not to think so much about the complexities. I thought about the crucifix, and realized that I was spending all of my time looking inward at the sources and habits traced out by my sin, instead of focusing my energy outward into relationship and communion with Jesus.
I closed my eyes in the pew, dismissed my distractions, and rid myself of the inward gaze by contemplating the sacramental reality of the Eucharist that I would soon partake in. I thought of myself as a child, daughter, and spouse of Christ (the last has been difficult in the past), and looked at the altar in wonder and awe. Here I was, in God's house, especially near to Him, about to receive Him in a most intimate way. That sense of union; God wants to be with us like that all of the time. God wants to make our heart His home. When I realized that, with my heart open, I could understand it in a physical sense. Even though I had not yet received the Eucharist, of course, I felt a distinct and subtle peace. It wasn't like the sigh of relief or even the sense of a hug; it was a sense that the God of the universe wanted to just sit. Just be with me in the pew.
Here are some quotes from the Magnificat that I've read recently that have seemed especially poignant.
“The holy spirit cannot accomplish the fullness of redemption in us, cannot effect the conception of the Son of the Most High within us—and we cannot become another Mary, the Christian vocation in a nutshell—unless we seek the company of her through whom and in whom He is permanently present, not only among the choirs of angels in union with the Father and their Spirit, but also visibly and humanly in his Church and within the landscape of this world, so wretched yet so graced.” To Hear and Keep the Word, Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis
“...and within yourselves you will discover God's boundless goodness in having taken on our likeness by the union the divine nature has effected with our human nature. Let our hearts explode wide open, then, as we contemplate a flame and fire of live so great that God has engrafted himself into us and us into himself! Oh, unimaginable love! It would be enough if we had even appreciated it!” “Take Care how you hear,” Saint Catherine of Siena
“One must have the experience of God. The one who has had that experience feels transformed. That person knows what life is all about, the true one, the eternal life. He knows that God is the life of life and that, if we do not have an encounter with Him, the life of today will be hollow and empty. There is no other experience but that one: the face of a lover turned to his God, a God within himself, a God transforming him and making his whole life a loving gazed turned to the Other.” Father Maurice Zundel, Matthew's Encounter with Christ
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