Humiliation - Part 2

What happens after a person is totally humiliated...totally brought low so their face is smashed right into the ground leavng at least a 2 inch crater? When someone is at the lowest of the low, how do they rise from it?  Because when you are that low you have no power at all. You have no energy or sense of purpose. Your body may lay still on the preverbial ground, appearing dead, but your soul is spinning out of control in utter confusion and despair. How does someone rise from that?

The answer is simple: They can't. At least not on their own power.  The only thing that will get someone up and back into life again is God's grace. Don't laugh at me as if this is a simplistic, naive answer. I speak the truth. I also speak from personal experience. I've been in that place a few times in my life and if you have been there too, then you know it is "not fun" and it is a very dangerous place to be.  It is dangerous because a person is very fragile and if they are not receptive to God's grace, then they are sunk.

God's grace is sufficient for us - so says Scripture. God's grace is capable of raising someone up instantaneously from the mire. However, most of the time it is a gradual process.  Why is it gradual? Well, the "gradual" part is for our benefit. Even though we'd like the pain to go away instantaneously, sometimes God helps us rise slowly. In the slow rising we learn lessons and we gain wisdom and strength that will serve us well if this should ever happen again.

When we are in the place of humiliation....when our entire being is as low as one can go, we pray and beg for clarification, for healing, and we want it NOW.  But the slow rising is sort of like baking clay in a kiln for hours and hours and hours at incredibly hot heat. It turns us into a new being and it solidifies us from the core of our being. We become a new creation and we APPRECIATE the process once it is through.  I think sometimes when it happens fast we focus solely on the MIRACLE of the healing, which is cool, but we don't realize how  far down from up really is.  When we rise slowly we can look at everything on the way up, like a glass elevator slowly moving between floors. We appreciate the journey and really especially appreciate the destination once we get there.

The Holy Spirit lifts us up, heals us.  We lay there and let Him do it. There is nothing else we can do. We are like a bird still in the egg, waiting to be born.  A tiny bird lays there while God does the work. It is only when God gives the OK that the bird is able to kick and peck its way out of the egg. Until then, he just rests.

Resting implies patience, something modern peole do not have much of.  Patience and resting can be a painful and frustrating thing. But if we are going to ever become saints, this is something we have to tolerate and learn from. This is the hardest thing, even if we believe and know that God's grace will eventually heal us, we get impatient because we do not yet know the reason for God taking so long.  He is God after all and can do anything quickly if he wants to, so we wonder why.

When in this stage we can become very angry at God. He expects it.  The anger can make us feel even worse because we start feeling guilty for being angry at God. This just perpetuates our humiliation.

In time, when we are tired of struggling, and are so exhausted, we just rest again, and then we start to see the value of patience.  We pray for patience. We practice patience. That is all we can do.  It is like when St. Peter said to Jesus "To whom else can we go Lord, you have the words of eternal life?".  He has all the control.

The final stage of humiliation before we rise is realizing that although we are sons and daughters of God, we are also made out of nothing and are nothing without the grace of God.  In this stage of nothingness lies acceptance of who we are, and then a feeling of gratefulness starts to well in our souls for the great love of God that has caused us to be. That is true humility - knowing our place before God.  God is God and we are not.  We are so not.

The gratefulness that wells up in our souls just for being allowed to BE starts to energize us.  We have now received a "right perspective". Our hearts turn towards God - or they start to turn slowly - ever slow slowly.  In time, we pick our little heads up and look around through the mire caked on our eyelids.  God's grace falls like rain and slowly washes the mire away.  Our vision becomes clearer.  The water of His grace nourishes us.  Soon we can sit up.  Silence remains as we get our bearings.  Soon after that we can kneel.  And we kneel with in the space of a real humility and then we start to pray as never before, lifting up hands of gratitude.

We stay in ths kneeling place - either interiorly or exteriorly - it doesn't matter because the soul really has no legs - it is just an expression. We kneel. We kneel. We kneel.

After sufficient prayer and being filled up and healed by God's grace, we stand in His presence.  We are new creatures, for we realize that we are just that - creatures.  Creatures that are loved in a fantastical way and who have rights and privileges that are beyond our wildest dreams.  We realize that we are children of the King of Kings. We are princes and princesses. But now, we know better.  We don't puff with pride that we are royalty for our King is a Servant King, and being His servants is a privilege. Following in His footsteps is a privilege.

The end of Humiliation part 2 is the realization that we must learn the art of simulataneously keeping ourselves low before the King, but also realizing that it is this same King that will raise us up and bless us to the Heavens with His grace.  So, we walk a tight rope of humility as we follow our King, and .....and this is the clincher.....after being through all that horrible mire and being near death and as miserable as we have felt for so long....we realize that He is the potter and we are the clay and that humiliation gives us the gift of humility.  The gift of humility brings us to gratitude.  Gratittude opens us up to be able to receive God's grace and gifts.  God's grace and gifts, once received, fill us with humility once again.

So, I am learning that if we are truly called to be saints, and want to be saints, then we have to be open to this process when walking "The Way", following our servant King.  If we are to be like Him, we have to do what He did, and allow ourselves to be humiliated as He was humiliated.

After all, our sweet King Himself, knows humiliation exponentially, doesn't He?  He took on the sins of us all, mere creatures.  He felt each one of them. He allowed the devil to ground Him into the earth.  He allowed His own creatures to spit on Him, to mock Him, hit Him, scourge Him, strip Him naked, laugh at Him, nail Him to a cross, and crucify Him.  So, the next time I get, or you get, into a place where you feel totally humiliated, think about HIM.

Humiliation makes us one with Jesus - and that is the goal of every life whether we realize it or not - to be ONE with Jesus.

These are the thoughts I wanted to share with all of you tonight, whoever you are.

A little Luxury please.....

I am overall a "plain and simple" person. I live very thriftily. I work hard. I have worked hard my whole life and usually have worked more than one job at a time - sometimes even three jobs with tiny odd jobs on the side.  Still, I cannot get ahead financially. Just when I think I am doing okay, I get blindsided with something.

So my prayer, selfish as it is, is to have just a little Luxury in my life. I'm not necessarily talking expensive things, but things that might help me feel a little better and give me some joy or help me feel like I belong somewhere.  A little Luxury for me could be simple things such as being greeted in a really friendly way by a sales clerk, or someone at church taking the time to introduce themselves or smile when they walk by me (sadly, this hardly ever happens at church. I am quite invisible there.), or a little Luxury could be getting to relax a half hour in my hammock.

Of course, it would be cool to have a little bigger Luxury thing like getting to stay in a really fancy Disney Hotel. I wouldn't scoff at something like that!  Then again, I would like to be able to hire someone to finish fixing my house so I can finally get some furniture like a rug, chair and a couch or maybe finish my kitchen so I could actually put things in the cabinets.

The biggest Luxury of all, and the one that would mean the most, is feeling some consolation from the Holy Spirit....to feel God really really close to me so I can feel secure and loved and like the future will be okay.

The Gates of Hell will not prevail against us

Scripture promises us that no matter how bad it gets out there, satan will not win. The gates of Hell will not prevail. We have to hold on to this as we continue to walk into this challenging time in our church history.  We are being assaulted both inside and outside of the church walls.

 Inside the walls we have a few priests who are giving us a bad name by doing stupid and criminal things with our precious children, finances, etc... and people tend to generalize that all priests are like that, and they are not.  There are many good priests around and I think they are stressed out by what those few bad priests are doing and it makes their work even more challenging.  We have a very discouraged laity and only 30% of Catholics actually going to Mass on Sunday. They need their priests to be courageous and speak much more boldly in their homilies.
Outside the church we have the attack on religious freedom in the United States. Many are blind to that as well but they too, in time, will be forced to choose whose side they are on. It is obvious that the media and our culture in general is anti-Catholic by the way our church is portrayed on TV, or ignored, or the way people think it is okay now to use God's name in vain on TV and radio.  That said, I was impressed to see that the TODAY show just had a positive piece on a priest from Holy Cross College in MA. So there are pockets of positivity out there showing that the Gates of Hell will not prevail.

As a result of these interior and exterior attacks, the Church's people are suffering. The Church has an image problem. The Church is being persecuted.  The Church is weary and sad.  That sad: we can't lose heart.  We have to hang on to Jesus because He will get us through this time in history.

What can WE do as individuals ? Well, here are my thoughts..... Our good priests can pray more and work on becoming more holy than they currently are.  Our good priests can be bold in preaching the Good News and in consoling their flocks.  The laity can also pray more and work on their own holiness.  The laity can work on increasing their knowledge of the faith and both priests and laity need to stay close to the sacraments. The laity can prayerfully support their priests.

Not that I am anyone special at all, but in my life's experience, I would like to offer the following prescription to my fellow and fella Catholics - lay and clergy alike:

1.   Increase your prayer time - especially in front of the Blessed Sacrament whenever possible.
2.   Read the daily readings or go to daily Mass if you can. Meditate on them. Live them.
3.   Be nice to each other.
4.   Practice the spiritual and corporal works of mercy.
5.   Go to regular confession.
6.   Don't be afraid to practice your faith in public: say grace before meals, wear religious jewelry, speak of your love for Jesus.
7.   Read other good books about our faith, the saints, the Catechism, etc...
8.   Support each other.  Priests should not be afraid to get to know their flock.  Laity should pray for their  clergy.
9.   Avoid as much temptation as possible becuase the draw these days is very strong and the devil is being  creative in the ways in which he snatches people.
10. Pray the rosary. Ask for Mary's intercession. Ask for the saints to intercede as well.