First Friday Adoration

On the first Friday of the month, the kids and I begin our day with Mass and Adoration, followed by a little gathering for homeschoolers.  I am looking forward to our activities building being completed over the next several  months so the kids will not be such a source of noise to the people upstairs praying in the church, or to the people working in the office.  I am hoping to go back tonight because the youth minister is starting a holy hour for the young people with singing and prayer.  Mrs. W. is always happy for families to attend the youth events, which is something I am still adjusting to.  (In the churches I grew up in, the youth workers seemed to feel that parents were a necessary evil who existed to provide transportation and snacks for their kids and after that to stay out of the way.) 

I was thinking today when I was praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament that it would be nice if I was a little more susceptible to His influences.  It seems I am making such slow process when it comes to growing in virtue.  I know what God wants and I forget He is patient and that He has given me a goal rather than a memo that says, "Why isn't this done yet?"  I read this the other night:

"The Infinite compasses the finite; the Creator absorbs the creature.  Man lives in God, and God lives in man, but man is lost in God.  Hence it is evident that the indwelling life can progress only slowly.  This is one of its essential features."  (From Transforming Your Life Through the Eucharist, by Fr. John A. Kane, chapter eight, "Patience will pave your path to Holiness.")

Later in the chapter, Fr. Kane writes,

"We may be saddened because the Blessed Sacrament has produced no felt change in us.  Calmness and composure will return to us if we but realize that sanctity is most solid when its hidden power shows itself in the ordinary, the insignificant, the commonplace.  This is the surest sign of the progress of the Eucharistic life.  Holiness is most beautiful in the midst of the most uneventful.  Few are called to do the extraordinary for God.  All are called to be faithful in that which is least."

I tend to look for the big "sea-change."  I am surrounded by "the ordinary, the insignificant, the commonplace" and "the most uneventful."  I am an expert in things like changing diapers and "making do," as my mother would say.  I find myself seeing these things as circumstances that will inhibit my spiritual growth, but I see in Fr. Kane's writing that rather than working against me, these things may be working for me.  If I read it right, they are fertile ground for virtue to grow, and all the "thrills and chills" I am expecting (possibly because of my thrilly, chilly upbringing in a Pentecostal denomination) are the real impediments because they can't last.  Growing up my pastor used to say, "You can't live forever on the mountain top."  Fr. Kane writes, "sensible fervor is not religion, but its fitful, accidental accompaniment."  

Once at Confession Fr. H. shared a story with me about coming back from a particularly wonderful pilgrimage.  He returned back to the parish with his ongoing to-do list, no great spiritual highs, and felt a little disappointed as he sat kneeling in the sanctuary one day.  He felt the Lord spoke to him, saying, "This is all you'll ever have," as he lifted his eyes to Jesus in the Tabernacle.  It is true.  Jesus is all we will ever have.  How can we feel like we want a little something more? He is everything.  When we have Jesus we have everything.  Without Him we have nothing.

One last word from Fr. Kane regarding Confession:  "We must be at peace with God before we receive Him as our Divine Guest.  Hence Confession is divinely prescribed to fit the soul for a worthy Communion."  In my studies about the sacrament of Matrimony I have found that, as in all sacraments but Baptism (which predisposes me to receive any grace at all), I do not receive grace if I am not in a state of grace.  You seasoned Catholics are saying, "Well, duh!" but I am new at this.  So that is my job in all of this.  Stay in a state of grace, and put myself in places frequently where I can soak up more.