My Lord and My God!

The classes continue to spiral, but things will survive. The relationships are stagnant, but they will survive. The future is clouded, but it will remain. Nothing is impossible with God, and I am firm in my path with Him. What wonders are there to be seen if only watched closely enough.

I think this has been the problem for me the past few semesters, but especially with this one. I am rushing to the finish line and not paying enough attention to the present. No matter how strong I am, I cannot change something unmovable. I must work within to work without what and who I love.

This past weekend was the PAX (Pursuing After Christ) Retreat in Caldwell, Texas. I wasn't sure what to expect, or what to want to take away from it. However, God did provide in ways so wonderful and unexpected. A friend who went on the retreat, David, put it best as his hope was to have a "scheduled escape." I love that phrase. We often are too "busy" to have a scheduled escape. We work ourselves to death or drive ourselves senseless trying to achieve an unachievable goal. The great adage of "everything in moderation" is so fitting here. So it was a wonderful scheduled escape, but it was also much more than that.

There were sixteen of us on the retreat, so it was a very personal retreat, one filled with free time to contemplate. It wasn't a busy-bee retreat, ones that I'm so accustomed to. It was very much a thinking retreat. Not on the rat race of life, but more of finding tools to apply in the havoc that tends to be at least my life.

Bishop Fulton J. Sheen once said: "There are two ways of waking up in the morning. One is to say, 'Good morning, God,' and the other is to say, 'Good God, morning!'"[1, 2] I think we should remind ourselves to wake up the first way and not the second.

The retreat this past weekend was more than a retreat. It was an awakening of my soul down to its deepest parts, one that shook me, one that turned me over with a deepening so great, so powerful that it will stay with me ever more. It was a conversion so amazing and so piercing into my heart that I know I did not believe before in Him so fervently as I do now.

So, I wish to share with you some words I quickly wrote from that evening. I was so moved in the meditation and contemplation on the Gospel passage from John 20. What it came to be was that conversion of the heart, to making things new. These words below cannot but only attempt in describing what kind of experience found within that hour of adoration, the piercing flashes of light with desolation and a swelling of consolation from God. It was an experience so strong I've never felt before, but I know that it was placed before me for a reason, and I must carry on as the mountaintop visit has gone away again:

The Canticle

How do I describe this experience I have been thrust into?
How do I compare it to any other experience in which I have ever felt or borne in my experience?
How can I doubt the Lord any further?
How can I not love Him as I know now?

What grace has been given to me!
What love has indwelled in me!
What caress of the heart have I felt!

My heart has seen the Lord. It has walked in His presence, His True Presence in all His Glory. His hand has calmed my nervous heart. His mercy has washed over me with all compassion this world can provide. His Light has filled my heart. It has graced me with a brightness so blinding. It has filled me completely.

With all my heart shall I continue to praise you, O God, in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

With all my heart shall I sing of the Lord. I will proclaim from the depths to the heights of every land. I will speak the Word of Truth to all the lands all the days of my life. Amen.