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Sacred Heart, and a Year for Priests

I’m all set to write something and suddenly I cannot upload images because my computer crashes all the time!  That and evidently there are some java issues going on.  But that won’t get me down because I, of course, can cleverly post images via source codes. Sacred Heart

EWTN’s site has a beautiful Act of Consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus which is entirely appropriate for today’s Feast.

Someone was asking about the picture of the lamb I posted the other day, and it actually has to do with one of my favorite Scripture passages, John 1:5 ,  “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not comprehended it” (depending of course upon your translation.)   The lamb is the light of the world, see.  When we experience darkness in our lives, it’s good to think upon Christ shining in the darkness, always reaching out to us, always calling us to himself, into his Sacred Heart.

I was thinking about this yesterday because of Vincent Van Gogh‘s painting Starry Night.

Starry Starry Night

Van Gogh was of course insane… people ponder that perhaps his entire life was a spiritual journey. But then elsewhere I read that his spiritual life would be gone because he suffered with addictions to absinthe, alcohol, God knows what else. And I was left to ponder upon Christ’s work in our lives.

You see, for everyone, because everyone is addicted to something even if it’s coffee or chocolate (and thank God there is chocolate,) or operates at some level of dysfunction, (it’s referred to as a part of original sin by some, or as part of our fallen human nature,) Jesus Christ reaches out as the Divine Healer. All through the Gospels he goes out to the leper, goes out to the blind man, cures them, heals them, makes them whole, brings them back into the fold, back to the Father.

Especially when we are wounded or wandering, lost in a sea of brokeness, we should be aware of God’s presence mysteriously in our lives because he goes after the lost sheep with ardor. How much would he search for that one lost sheep while the other 99 were safe, and how much would he rejoice when we came back into the fold.

Greatly. Very much greatly.

Jesus …

I beseech Thee, through Thine infinite Goodness, grant that my name be engraved upon Thy Heart, for in this I place all my happiness and all my glory, to live and to die as one of Thy devoted servants.

Amen.

Doxology

“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen”

When I think upon the doxology I think upon many things.

The Trinity is a mysterious revelation; Father, Son, Holy Spirit, a community of divine persons so richly complex and unfathomable that I’m humbled merely contemplating them.

Then too come the whole idea of a personal God, a God of three persons. I had lived my life after ‘growing up’, so often trying to transcend everything, trying to thinking of God as an abstract energy in the universe running through all things…. that God has a personal nature, and reaches out to me specifically in a broken world still humbles me. It’s hard to accept sometimes, and gives me pause.

Created in the image and likeness of God, we are called also to communion of persons. So I often find myself in this short prayer that I often say throughout the day, thinking of all the people that I know, that I have known.

I think about my parents who have gone before me, my grandparents. I think about my immediate family and our ongoing dramas. I think about my friends and loved ones and wonder about how they are doing. I think about my enemies, the ‘hands of all who hate us’ (because let’s face it, not everyone gets along in the world…)holy_trinity

I think upon all of those people, and of those who’ve gone before and of those who will come after and how we are all somehow interconnected as children of God, as unique and beautiful creations more marvelous than the lilies of the field, created little lower than the angels, whose nature now sits at the right hand of God himself. And that’s a very beautiful image of all of humanity, struggling as it were through darkness and through light.

I think of all those others during the last part of the prayer especially; “as it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever, world without end.”

Looking around the world and seeing the sun rise and set, feeling the wind, noting how beautiful all things are, all of the problems of life fade away, even momentarily. All of this has existed for ages, it will exist for ages… God was the same then, God will be the same in the future, God is the same now.

And it boils down to ‘Now’. God is a communion of persons, and in all of the created glory of the universe every moment is created to be filled with His glory. All persons throughout history can share in the glory that is always present, always given in every moment, every day, throughout all of eternity.

God is reaching out in a personal way to me, calling me to forgiveness and to repentance, calling me to love, calling me to at least try to live for the glory of eternity. God is calling out to all of us in a manner filled with a deep and personal love beyond description.

Praying the Doxology I am rooted in time and in space, connected to past and to future, becoming an anchor of God’s love wherever I am, reaching out to my Creator for understanding, knowledge, wisdom, strength, joy…

No wonder it takes me so long to get through my prayers.

Year for Priests Revisited

More on the Year for Priests: Some events. A beautiful Icon, seen here.

yearofthepriesticon

It’s going to be interesting to see what this will do for Priests. Will it renew the hearts of those who have struggled, or who want to leave so badly?

Will it soften the hearts of the cold blooded ladder climbers who ingratiate themselves to the hierarchy?

When entered into sincerely, no matter how we feel or what our experience of it is, prayer will transform us for the better. So… one would only hope to enter into the Year for Priests with a sincere, humble, and prayerful heart.

weblog…

Feeling Fluish… Just the Weblog of late… Out and about, so to check out:


Five conservative women bloggers.

Catholicism Computes; interesting blog, plus has the great WordPress plugin for Catholics – Catholic Reference Extension which I, admittedly, have not gotten around to actually plugging in.

The Recovering Choir Director promises future leisure reading. I can relate to being a recovering choir director / organist / sacred musician and now, recovering priest: it’s brutal on the front lines! The gates of hell are no place to spend an eternity.

I’ve been Twitterring up a storm, but am now contemplating Friend Feed; the front lines often extend to social networking too, of course.

World news: The drama continues over Obama’s Birth Certificate. Sheesh…. what’s the big deal about a birth certificate? Most of us keep them handy, we take them when evacuating for storms, etc. Why expect any less from the president?

A new NASA study demonstrates that Solar Cycles are responsible for past warming, not mankind.

Just for fun: A Blonde-Star rescue call.

A cop confiscates marijuana, then bakes it in brownies and is calls 911 reporting his overdose.

Off to heal…

Fr. Kenneth Allen