Easter Season 2024 !!!!!. We continue or reflection of this Easter Season so we are able to view the present life events with fresh lenses that reveal the great mysteries that are present in the present, in the here and now moment. It is always about where I find my grounded two feet. The ground we tread on is sacred ground. Every step is a sacramental step. Mystery permeates our reality. As a consequence all must be reverenced, as it is holy. There is nothing, no moment lived,, no person encountered, that does not have "perfectly hidden, and perfectly revealed " (Rohr) within their depths The Paschal Mystery. So then it stands to reason that our Paschal experience, and understanding of said Mystery is always caught up in encounter. The richness of the gift, like buried treasure, is revealed as the digging is done. No digging, no encounter with what is hidden in the depths will reveal to us nothing. Then instead of the sacramental experience of the moment, there is a meaningless existence. This is turn will be fodder for the false self to lead us ' far off lands " where me will meet the rebellious son living within us. We are aching to journey home to the warm, unconditional loving embrace of The Prodigal Father. This is always ours, right now. It is always right now for you and I. We have been generated by The Eternal Mother/Father creator in eternity's our our origin, and destiny is eternal. I pray this encourages you to claim all that you are, and all that is being given to you.
The desert always is the source of new perspectives and as a consequence, new understandings. I think St.Augustine famous words " O Beauty, ever ancient, ever new" can be applied to the sacramentality of the desert experience. What is ancient, and what is new, we are led to discover, over a long period of time. The Jesus, The Good Shepherd was in the desert for forty days. Ours, on the other hand, is a life long journey. A tough slog. We slowly surrender to the process of surrendering. The egocentric ego does not surrender without a life long fight. That battle rages every moment in our depths. The results are revealed to us in the events of our daily living. In this way ,The Resurrection becomes a lived reality. Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ comes and reveals His Risen Presence in each and every encounter with loss, abandonment and death.
We left poor St. Thomas in his rejection of the reality of The Resurrection. All that was going to change when The Risen Christ reappeared in the room, again without notice. As The Good Shepherd he reaches out to Thomas, and to the place of rejection. He approaches Thomas as he is, and offers to him His wounded hands and side to be penetrated. At what cost ? From his encounter with the sacred wounds of The Good Shepherd, Thomas leaves his rejection stance and surrenders to faith. A simple account in the Resurrection narrative, but in simplicity is always hidden, and as yet unknown, untold riches. So it is with us, and our personal experiences of The Paschal-Easter Mystery.. When we bring our woundedness to prayer, they through grace, mysteriously "become our sacred wounds" as Fr. Rohr so wisely councils us. The fruits of these wounds are not for ourselves, for our own grandoisement. As we encounter, come face to face, with a contemporary suffer we must first be able to, somehow, in some way encounter them with compassion. Not empathy, compassion. We must let the wounded one we are conscious of their pain, Why ? Because we too were in the place of guilt, shame, anger, abandonment, despair, powerlessness, and hopelessness. Our guts were hanging out. Peace and serenity were words written somewhere in some book. We too were experiencing, hell on earth. That was not the end for us, rather that was the beginning. The beginning of a way of acting, which in turn led to a new way of thinking. This happened over a period of time.The gift of perseverance must be prayed for. We must be honest the journey is not easy, anything but. ( This is to be continued. Ran out of gas at 10:20 p.m.) Sleepy, mistake prone, Grandpa Joe.
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