“The Lord is my Light and my salvation; whom do I fear?” (Ps. 27:1)
I was standing in line in the Apache Junction Post Office when I heard the sad story of “my kids’ Dad.”
He was not really a husband, nor a father, but a biological Dad, who left the teller of this story 17 years after he began a relationship with her that ended in … divorce? No, not really divorce, the relationship – whatever it was – simply came to an end. They could never have been married, or she would have identified him as her ex-husband, not “my kids’ Dad.” They were related by kids. He was the father, and she was the mother.
She was a pretty girl and told the story to an interested young man in a neck brace.
It was a story of how she moved to this small town in
The young man in a neck brace looked at her with anxiety and compassion.
I mentally added her to my prayer list. It was a long line, so at least 20 other strangers heard her story. I don’t know their response.
It’s funny the Democrats all think that poverty needs to be solved by printing more money (which by the way makes things cost more), or by robbing from the “so-called” rich (people who work for a living) and giving to the “poor” (people who don’t). (I do think people who work should voluntarily and privately help those who can’t.)
But the Pope has correctly identified the true cause of poverty. It’s sin. It’s eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That wasn’t fruit that Adam and Eve were snacking on in the Garden of Eden. It was arrogance and pride, a belief that man himself can control his own destiny outside of a relationship with God and His law. The people who suffer from the fruit of that pride are helpless women and children, who live in poverty. Good marriages make for happy, cared-for children. Our world has forgotten that and abandoned its Christian roots. And so the image of the father is so badly scarred that man has forgotten his dignity as a child, a child of God. What kind of father would abandon his children and their mother?
Yet “even if my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me in.” (Ps. 26:10)
You know that God already sent His Son into the world so that we might have life and have it abundantly. You know that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. He still dwells among us in the Holy Eucharist.
St. Teresa of
I love the part of the Holy Mass before the Consecration, known as the Sanctus.
Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.
“He Who comes in the name of the Lord” is Jesus Christ riding meekly into
One man, who belonged to a non-Christian religion, heard that we had God in our Churches, and he said if he truly believed God was present in the Catholic Church that he would be on his knees every day in front of the tabernacle and he would never leave. But many of our churches are even locked up during the day. Jesus is a prisoner and sometimes it seems like the people cannot have Him.
Even God the Father is frustrated with this state of affairs.
For in 1932, he appeared to Mother Eugenia Elisabetta Ravasio.
And He said, “I cannot give My beloved Son another time to prove My love for men! I am now coming among them in order to love them and to make them know this love, assuming their image, their poverty.”
And then he put down His crown and His glory and took on the appearance of an ordinary man. He took the globe of the world and held it to His Heart, and then He sat down next to Mother Eugenia. One can almost see Him doing the same thing in the Apache Junction Post Office, taking off his crown, his glory to put His arm around a young lady standing in line and pouring out her heart to a stranger in a neck brace.
The Father said He came to banish the fear that men have of Him, to bring hope to all nations, and to make Himself known just as He is. “I have but one concern: to watch over all men and love them as My children.”
He said the same thing in 1 John 3:1-3
“See what love the Father has bestowed on us in letting us be called children of God!
The reason the world does not recognize us is that it never recognized the Son. Dearly beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall later be has not yet come to light. We know that when it comes to light we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Everyone who has this hope based on Him keeps himself pure, as he is pure.”
We cannot “see” the Father until we are like Him. That’s why Jesus prayed that we would be “perfect” as His heavenly Father is perfect. Many of us struggle with that path of perfection, and therefore fail to realize that God IS our Father. But for those who persevere in a relationship with God through daily prayer and Scripture reading, the understanding that they are indeed His child will act like a bolt of lightening in their lives. One cannot really understand the words “Love your neighbor as yourself,’ until you understand that God is OUR Father and God is Love. Then you can see the tiny stranger in the womb, the elderly woman dying in the nursing home or the annoying co-worker as your sister or brother because they are also God’s children. This is a very special gift of God. We in the Catholic Church call it piety or filial (family) relationship with God.
As the men and women of our time come to an understanding that they are indeed the beloved children of a Loving Father, then scenes like the one I witnessed in the Apache Junction post office will become less frequent. For if you KNOW you are God’s child and you KNOW that your spouse and child are also His children, how can you abandon them for your selfish convenience?
When I was four years old, I was in a car accident with my mother and father. I remember being pulled from the back seat by a stranger, while seeing my mother knocked out with blood on her forehead and my Dad getting out of the car with blood at his throat.
I screamed, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.” And then I threw up, but nobody let me have my Daddy, who was rushed to the hospital and died.
But I tell you this solemnly that God the Father heard my cry. He gave me Jesus in the Eucharist three days later when my mother and Grandmother walked me down the hall of the hospital to the Catholic Chapel. They pointed to the tabernacle and told me that Jesus was present there, and that I should pray for my Dad, who had died. Since then, walls, locked doors, illness, ill-treatment -- nothing can separate me from the love of my Jesus, the love of my God.
(Mother Eugenia’s vision of the Father is approved by the Catholic Church and contained in a little book called “The Father Speaks to His Children,” available through Mary’s Call at (816) 942-9783 in the U.S. (862)362682 in Italy and (905) 893-9649 in Canada.)
