Peace and Harmony

September 17, 2024

Benedictine Center

 Hi!  How is each and every one?  These past days I have been going to the wake of my niece in law who according to her attending doctor was inflicted by a very rare malignant cancer. Signs of its presence showed less  than a month and a half ago. It was fast growing and in constant movement; the surgeon said he was not going to operate on her because the cancer is growing in size and moving to different places. Life has become short in these times.  Only God knows what He is allowing to happen, only He knows best, trust in Him, abandon all your cares to Him and take care of your relationship with Him all the more during the day and every day.

From one of her close friends I gathered that my niece in law in some of their get togethers some years ago, would complain of head ache and one time she held on to her because she was dizzy. But you know she is a runner, a swimmer, sportive type of person.  The best news is that she was spiritually prepared; she was a Sunday Mass practitioner and she received the sacraments two three days before the supposed surgery.

Just at this moment I received news from another friend who is now being prepared for her pacemaker surgery tomorrow.  Let’s say a prayer for her, the doctors and medical persons attending to her, her husband and the rest of the family. Tomorrow, the 24^th is the feast day of Our Lady of Ransom.

Allow me please to share with you the readings of the Mass today. I find them so comforting and apt for this post that I have been trying to start off and couldn’t manage to do so the past week.

1^st Reading:  Proverbs 3:27-34: “My son, do not refuse a kindness to anyone who begs it, if it is in your power to perform it.  Do not say to your neighbor, ‘Go away! Come another time! I will give it to you tomorrow’, if you can do it now.  Do not plot harm against your neighbor as he lives unsuspecting next door.  Do not pick a groundless quarrel with a man who has done you no harm.  Do not emulate the man of violence, never model your conduct on his; for the willful wrong-doer is abhorrent to the Lord, who confides only in honest men. The Lord’s curse lies on the house of the wicked, but he blesses the home of the virtuous.  He mocks those who mock, but accords his favour to the humble.”

 The Responsorial Psalm:  The just will live in the presence of the Lord.

Who are the just?  Lord, who shall dwell on your holy mountain?

He who walks without fault; he who acts with justice and speaks the truth from his heart; he does not slander with his tongue.

He who does no wrong to his brother, who casts no slur on his neighbor, who holds the godless in disdain, but honors those who fear the Lord.

He who keeps his pledge, come what may; who takes no interest on a loan and accepts no bribes against the innocent.  Such man will stand firm for ever.

Gospel Acclamation:  Your light must shine in the sight of men, so that, seeing your good works, they may give praise to your father in heaven.

Lk 8: 16-18:  “Jesus said to his disciples:  ‘No one lights a lamp to cover it with a bowl or to put it under a bed.  No, he puts it on a lamp-stand so that people may see the light when they come in.  For nothing is hidden but it will be made clear, nothing secret but it will be known and brought to light.  So take care how you hear; for anyone who has will be given more; from anyone who has not, even what he thinks he has will be taken away.’

Now shall we get down to business? Following is the continuation of our divine longing for justice (From Broken Gods, Hope, Healing, and the Seven Longings of the Human Heart, Gregory K. Popcak, Ph. D. Ch 6).

The Great Injustice 

Aleteia

The loss of this harmony is the Great Injustice that still has humanity reeling today.  This pain exacerbates every other injustice we experience—big or small—during our earthly life.  Imagine that I suffered a football injury in my shoulder when I was young, and twenty years later on a rainy day, you bump into that shoulder while passing me in the hallway.  I wince in pain.  Perhaps it would have been uncomfortable to have you bump into me even if I hadn’t been injured before, but I experience my present pain all the more acutely because of the old injury.  The same is true for the pain we feel over frustrated expectations, big and small offenses, and other injustices.

 

Every pain is made worse by the distance that exists in the relationship between the injured person and God.  Though most of us don’t recognize it, each of us has a deep pool of angst (anguish) just below the surface.  All it takes is some unexpected personal wound to rip off the scab before we start raging.  It isn’t because the traffic made us late for the meeting. 

It is because, underneath it all, the deepest parts of our humanity feel naked without God, and the powerlessness of feeling totally, utterly, terrifyingly alone is mind-numbingly infuriating.  But it is not the pain of the present that is the problem.  It is our distance from God that is the true source of our impotent rage. 

The spiritual traveler who is walking the illuminative or the unitive way will offer a profoundly different and more patient response to even the most hurtful offenses than will the person who has not yet begun to walk even the purgative way.  That’s because the latter is farther away from God and has not yet learned to surrender and tap into the graces that God can provide.  Our ability to practice the spiritual work of mercy that is “bearing wrongs patiently” is greatly impacted by where we find ourselves on the path of divinization.  Why?  Because as we experience the progressive healing of the deeper injustice caused by separation from God, we find we have more resources available to contend with the lesser sufferings of this world.  Embracing the call to divinization facilitates the satisfaction of our divine longing for justice—restoration of our union with God—thereby enabling us to have a more responsible engaged (as opposed to a reactively impulsive) attitude toward the injustices we experience in the here and now.

In that here and now, the divine longing for justice compels us to challenge the injustice we encounter in life, and work to build Gods kingdom however we can.  God’s plan of divinization means setting not just us but the entire universe right again.  One day we will be a new creation and we will see the new heaven and the new earth (Rv 21:1), where, once again, harmony between us and others will be restored to a degree that is unimaginable in our post-fallen state.  In the meantime, our divine longing for justice propels us to seek out and create this harmony where we can. 

The longing for justice does not simply remind us of God’s intention to make things right again.  It challenges us in the here and now to cooperate with his grace to do what we can to create harmony with other people and in the world.

You know time and time again I find myself without anything to say except to take care of our relationship with God more and more each day.  I just cannot find any other more sensible thing to say to persons who share their hurts or hurts of others.  I suffer when I hear things of this kind among persons including myself.   I have been and I still find myself in the same similar situations they tell me and there is no other way I can find than to run to Our Lord and tell Him everything in my moments of silence with Him.  Most of the time I listen to Him and He tells me things in such a way that I cannot but accept and do.  I am even surprised at how I was able to do what He told me to do.  I guess what matters is forgetting ourselves, and thinking more of what is good for the others.  Never mind myself, the best is not to take yourself seriously when others hurt.  Oh I do not like to put myself ever again in such situations I couldn’t get myself out of.  It is not me, I tell Him because if it were myself the situation will not change any bit for the better.  I realize that He does not only work inside myself; He works on many other persons outside of myself.  It simply is amazingly awesome.

See you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may you find love and laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care; ‘til He brings us together again.”

Affectionately,                    

Guadalupinky