Here I share one of the most profound moments in my life, one of those encounters one never forgets. This was the Easter Triduum, 2007. I was 49 years old, unaware that I would soon move across the country, fall in love, start a new life, be heartbroken, and be living in a different way.
Holy
Thursday, 2007.
The service starts at 7:00 pm, but it is 9:00 by the time I skulk
half-heartedly over to the church, tired, exhausted, preoccupied, behind,
figuring I’ll at least give a few minutes of prayer. I arrive as the worhipers
are leaving, and enter the basement, where they chant Taize before the Blessed
Sacrament, kneeling and sitting on the floor, many of them young students,
holding hands, chanting the Taize hymn, “Stay here with me, remain here with me,
watch and pray.” I join in, I love this chant. The sacrament is not in the usual monstrance, but simply
wafers in a bowl. We are worshipping a bowl of chips? I am uninspired. It would
be better to have no symbol here at all, than a symbol so lacking in visual
encouragement. It is as if we are worshiping in an empty space, like the ‘Who’
people in the “Grinch that stole Christmas,” after the Grinch steals their
tree. But the kneeling, chanting young people watch, and pray. I kneel and
watch and pray too. I gaze upon the place where the Blessed Sacrament ought to
be in its glory, where it lies instead in a stupid bowl. Resting in its humble,
dull, setting. A respectful distance is maintained, no one too close to the
table. As if to allow our Lord a little room to breathe.
The silence is
magical. At once it bursts upon me that we are remembering and joining with a
man in a grove two thousand years ago, and those others who watched with him,
silently, watching, and we support them there and they support us here. The veil of Time vanishes and we gaze down th centuries without Time. Something Real is here! We are transported. A Spirit is really here!
Do not
breathe too much. Listen, watch. I am fully awake and alert. A Spirit of such wholeness, such solidness,
such realness, that all around us in the world seems tired and unreal, only half
existing, compared to this vivid Spirit. I come to myself realizing that my jaw
is hanging open the way a dog’s might when he contemplates the steak held in
his owner’s hand, as though Christ himself was standing there, looking upon us
once again, and it was the most incredible thing one could ever hope to live to
see, and that night becomes vivid, where He sweats great drops as he faces the
early end of a great life, as he considers all that he dreamed that will never
come to be, as he summons up the courage to trust that this terrible choice is
in fact the right one, as he prepares to gamble everything on his faith in the
Father. And with great courage, great love, he accepts the pain, the pain not
only of the body, but of the heart. For us all. All is complete.We are all one in this moment of choice that rings down the eons.
*******************
Then
human nature intrudes. In the midst of it all, like a mirage, the red-headed
girl I always see at church comes and kneels immediately in front of me. She
always seems to be at Mass whenever I go, and always seems to be sitting just
in front of me no matter where I sit. She never looks at me, never says hello. She
is alluring, and so beautiful. I have watched her and noticed her for the last
couple of years in church. Yet I have never spoken to her, she has never spoken
to me, and I do not know her name. Now, this night, she blocks my view, just a
few feet away from me, as though I were not even there, invisible. Nor is she
is dressed to encourage my reflection on the Lord. She is dressed to encourage
my reflection on her lithe and perfectly formed waist and hips. A flash of
desire fills me, followed by resentment and then anger. “Why now do you seek to
draw me now from the joy of the Lord? This is not the time!” Is she the devil
come to distract me from real joy? Or an angel offered to me? I turn to the
Lord for help, and he smiles again. A thought fills my mind, formless,
wordless, perhaps translated something like this: “You were born as a man and
your desires are those of a man, I made you that way. Do not be ashamed, do not
be afraid. Be whole. Live in peace!” Now I return to prayer in peace, and to
Him. And a moment later, the red headed girl rises and makes here exit, like a
character in a Shakespeare play, to return when her time next arrives for her
part in a story I most dimly sense.
********
Meanwhile, we are chanting now, and
all in solid prayer, and the Spirit is still in the room, as real as you or me. How
do I Sense this? Not with physical senses, not even intuition: it just IS. One
would grope for words to describe such a Reality. But in my heart it is as if
this great Spirit seems to smile for a moment, standing there as a spirit amid
the chanting, visiting us, and in his smile all is new, and all is made whole.
My own aching heart, full of loss and grief, grows still and strong and whole.
So should all hearts this night. My head lifts, and I hear our Lord speaks
those words he spoke to those sinners he met on the road. The words they did
not expect from one so great: “Rise.” “Sin no more.” “Go free.” And I think to
me he whispers a bit more. “You were born to live this earthly life in great
joy. So live it.”
I offer to the Lord all my fear, all my
memory of desire and pain, every failed effort at what I thought was Love. I
remember many many days of love, followed by pain. All my longing, a life lived without
contentment. I pray in my heart: “Lord, where shall I go? I am baffled and lost
forever! Help me!” He only invites me to bring Him along. I will let Him lead,
and instead of trusting my answers and plans, I will trust Him, this Spirit
that seems so palpable here in the room, to Whom and for who we chant, with
whom we watch, down through the long centuries of blood and sorrow to this very
day, echoing through the centuries a great and holy desire for life and love
and truth---
that desire the same in our hearts this night now as it was
in his that night then, and we are one, all of us, here tonight and
those that night, and so indeed, we pray in peace, fully content to gaze upon
our love and our heart's desire represented here.
So I walk home from there, as though
some weight has been lifted. I know not where I go, nor what to do, nor why.
And he answers not these questions, but only says, “Wherever it is you are to
go, I will go too, and be with you.” And so I too am whole and good to go.
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