Wednesday, 5 October 2016

Don’t Wake Jesus – He Hears You When He is Sleeping…

Let’s call him Jonathan. Jonathan is my brother in Christ. He is tall, dark, handsome, intelligent and witty. He is fun-loving and loud and always the life of the party. He is as passionate as they come, and more annoying than you could ever begin to imagine. He wears his heart on his sleeve, will give up everything for those he loves and is much too loving to hold a grudge or act out of spite. He also has a potty mouth, a quick, explosive temper and will openly tell you that patience is not his strong suit, mainly because he doesn’t try hard enough.

He is also living proof that you can fall in love absolutely in love and then… well, forget.
Jonathan used to love the rosary. Jonathan knows it is a mortal sin not to attend mass on Sundays. He knows this so well that if he did happen to go to mass and had not attended confession, he would not dare receive communion.
It was the fact that he knew all of this and yet was not in a state of grace that truly broke my heart.
Jonathan went from daily rosaries and weekly mass to desperate, sporadic prayer and mass a few times a year. He went from examining his conscience regularly to ignoring that little voice in his head (God’s) and that loud voice in his ear (me) telling him he was selling himself short, that he was missing the mark, that he was made for greatness and yet was settling for much less than mediocrity.
My heart was so broken by this that it caused many an argument between My Lord and I. I would tell Him how much I was hurting (like He didn’t already know). I would lament HIS lack of action (humble, I know). I would cry and I would beg and I would ask Him why He was ignoring me, why I couldn’t hear or feel Him – why He wouldn’t just fix it.
I would pray (not hard enough), then I would do everything I could to bring Jonathan back. I tried lecturing him (FYI – it never works). I tried encouraging him by working my own Sunday mass times around his schedules and begging him to come. I tried asking his friends to come with me, hoping if they came he may be more inclined to make an effort. I tried everything I could think of.
Everything, that is, except leaving it to God.
I’ve told this story in part before.
At my first silent retreat, I took to reading ‘Confessions’ by St. Augustine. Augustine was a wicked youth. His mother, St. Monica, prayed for him so earnestly that even on her deathbed, she told him that his conversion was all she lived for. Augustine recorded her words to this effect: "son, nothing in this world now affords me delight. I do not know what there is now left for me to do or why I am still here, all my hopes in this world being now fulfilled."
Mama Mons, as I like to call her, never gave up on Augustine, no matter how wicked he got or how hopeless the situation seemed. One day, while she was weeping and begging a Bishop to speak to him and convince him out of moving to Milan, lest he be lost forever, the bishop got frustrated and wisely told her, 'the son of all these tears cannot be lost.' It was in Milan that he met St. Ambrose and was converted - the rest is history.
Monica’s steadfastness and the faith of this wise bishop convinced me that the son of all my tears would not be lost, either. My beloved Lord was not ignoring me – rather, He was simply sleeping in my boat, and, like the apostles, I lacked the faith to let Him weather the storm. In order for us to allow the Lord to deliver, we must keep Him company, not disturbing His slumber. This means prayer and trust, hand in hand, never neglecting one or the other.
With this in mind, St. Rita (patroness of impossible causes) joined Augustine and Monica in Our Church Triumphant dream-team. Most efficaciously of all, this team was captained by the Queen of Heaven and Earth, who could not ignore the pleadings of Jonathan’s earthly mother after she entrusted her son’s soul to this marvellous advocate.
It was this abandonment to Christ that was finally the catalyst for Jonathan’s coming home, and it was, without a doubt, the most wonderful miracle I have ever witnessed. After what felt like many, many tears over many, many years, what we had most desired happened  in the most sublimely simple and yet most astonishingly wondrous fashion.
Jonathan met a couple of wonderful Catholics who simply and subtly loved him into Jesus’ embrace. They watched sports together, found things in common with him and through the world of friendship, showed Him Christ.
Very soon after this, Jonathan went to mass of his own accord. The week after, I looked over at the confession line during mass and saw him standing there, waiting to receive the healing of Christ. My joy in seeing that cannot ever be described. Only in Heaven can anybody ever comprehend what I felt in that moment. It was then that the reality of Christ’s love became evident to me: Christ desires Jonathan so much because his soul is more precious than all of creation.
The creator of Heaven and Earth fashioned the stars and allowed the oceans to roar for Jonathan alone. He came to Earth, suffered, died, resurrected, ascended, sent His Holy Advocate and now waits in the tabernacle day and night for Jonathan alone. He waits day and night, captive, alone, abandoned – all for Jonathan alone.
The Lord answered our pleadings because He does not want to spend eternity without His most precious children. Our requests are not foreign to Him – He knows the deepest desires of our hearts, and He desires our salvation and the salvation of those we love more than we ever could. Jonathan taught me that nobody is ever lost. Jonathan taught me that love conquers all, that Our Lord does not let us suffer in vain, and that hope is a virtue that can overcome all hardship.
Expecting miracles of our Lord is not self-absorbed, and it is not naiveté. It is what He asked of us when we were told to put our trust in Him – and when we do, OH the rewards.
How can we ever doubt His love when miracles surround us in every moment? If only we had the eyes to see and the hearts to believe…
Jesus calmed the storm... but not before letting the disciples
know He would probably have preferred
a few more minutes of shut-eye...

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