There are three kinds of wounds from which we must heal.
First, are those wounds that have been inflicted by the malice or indifference of others. Second, are the wounds that we have inflicted on ourselves due to sins of omission and commission. Third are the circumstances of life- misfortunes and accidents that appear to us as bad luck.
The great trial and test of faith comes when these things overwhelm us and paralyze us, and we ask God to fix them in an instant.
God certainly is able to do that, but He rarely does. Rarely doesn't mean never of course and our long and storied history points to many times where God has intervened in a manifestly immediate and visible way. We call these miracles.
Later this year, I will go on a nearly 3-week pilgrimage in which I will visit many places associated with miracles. Among them:
Nazareth, where God was incarnate in the womb of a virgin.
Bethlehem, where that virgin gave birth to her own creator.
Cana, where Jesus turned water into wine.
Mount Tabor, where Jesus was transfigured.
Tabgha, where Jesus fed thousands with one boy's lunch
Jerusalem, where Jesus rose from the dead.
Santarem, where a Eucharistic miracle took place.
Fatima, where the sun danced in the sky
Lourdes, where countless persons have been cured by miraculous water.
For me, this trip is about connection, restoration and healing. It is about my own journey in obedience, humility and surrender and the miracle of how God is healing this broken man and raising him up in ways that are 10 exits past impossible.
No, God has not yet answered all my prayers. No, He has not yet healed all that is broken in my life. In fact, the thing I have asked the most for is the area in which I have seen the least movement.
I have seen the least, but I don't know what miracles could be happening unseen to me.
What God has done, however, is fill so many of the other blanks in ways so overpowering and unimaginable that they have left me awestruck, humble and smaller before Him. In the power of surrender, I have learned one infallible fact. The arrogant and boastful is the most certain of gaining hell. If you encounter a person who never tires in telling you how wonderful they are, flee such a person because they can tell you nothing about God. This person is the sickest of all yet the most unwilling to be cured.
They know nothing of the Jesus who wept at the death of Lazaras. They know nothing of the Jesus who sweated blood as He pleaded, "Father, if it is possible, take this cup from me". They know nothing of Jesus compassion for the woman at the well, the one about to be stoned or the one soaking His feet with her tears. These are the ones who would condemn the first to get water in the scorching heat, pick up stones to hurl at the second, demand the 3rd repay the cost of the spikenard. They don't know that Jesus sanctified suffering and that their contempt for the least ones is purchasing salvation for those least ones while storing up wrath for themselves.
They know nothing about love, except of themselves, nothing of mercy except to demand it for themselves, nothing of the despair Jesus wore like a cloak as He cried out My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?
I know this Jesus. I know Him well.
I know Him because I have been betrayed like He was. I have been face down in the dirt like the woman was. I have wept bitter tears of remorse like Peter. I have been shipwrecked like Paul. I have been alone, crying out from the desert like John the Baptist. I have seen periods in my life where a single day's grain lasted many days and times, I burst out in tears in the confessional from grief that hit me like a hurricane only to walk out flying on clouds of joy, wanting to sing out I am free! I am free!
I know who Jesus is like the hypocrites will never know Him. Since I do, I hope for the hopeless, I forgive the unforgiveable, I love the unlovable and I believe the unbelievable. The humble will be exalted and the self-exalted will be humbled.
I am often that reprobate who cannot even lift my eyes to heaven but can only beat my breast and cry out God, have mercy on this miserable sinner. I have been both the prodigal son and the blind brother who scorned him.
I have suffered under the slavery of addiction and the paralysis of self-doubt and despondency.
When your life has been wiped out by a hurricane, you struggle to figure where to even start to rebuild. You start by taking one step. Lift one board, then another, then another.
It wasn't long ago that my life was in ashes and God seems to have hurled me off a 20,000 foot cliff. He has moved mountains since then. I constantly bob back and forth between awe and how He has moved these mountains and despondence that He seems to refuse to move those mountains. The biggest mountain is the estrangement from my kids and the realization that together, we were killing each other and apart, God can heal their wounds and mine. Would I have them in my life and God lose them or have them out of my life and God save them? Easy question to answer. Through the agony of estrangement, He is also saving me.
I have been a prisoner of the human condition and a slave to human blindness. However, Jesus sets the captive free. Jesus can only free the prisoner who admits he is a prisoner. Jesus can only remove the yoke from the slave who admits he has one. Jesus can only save the sinner you are, not the saint you pretend to be. No father loved his kids more than me but, in some way, I failed them. I was not able to protect them, and it really doesn't matter that it wasn't my fault. The pain I now endure by them, is pain that I endure for them and in the most mysterious of ways, I am being called to be the hero for them in a way I would never have expected and never would have hoped. In this case, the end does justify the means and their salvation- and mine- is the pearl of great price that is all that matters.
There is absolutely no room in heaven for hypocrites. In the war of love, only wounded soldiers can serve.
That is why the only path to heaven is the Via Dellarosa (the way of the cross). Often the way of the cross seems unbearably long and that is why we often have to reduce our journeys into baby steps. I have taken that approach to my preparation for this life changing trip. I have reduced it to many small steps. Let me show you and maybe you can apply it to your goals too.
February 7th (yesterday). First Friday devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. 2nd of 9.
February 14th- 7th months to go until the trip.
March 1st- First Saturday devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary (3rd of 5)
March 5th- Ash Wednesday, start of Lent
March 7th- First Friday, 3rd of 9. Stations of the Cross
March 14th- 6 months to go.
March 25th- Begin 9th month Christmas Novena on Annunciation.
April 4th- First Friday. 4th of 9. Stations of the Cross.
April 5th- First Saturday. (4th of 5)
April 13th- Palm Sunday
April 14th- 5 months to go.
April 17th- 19th- Triduum.
April 20th- Easter
April 27th- Divine Mercy. Special prayers for Melissa on her birthday
May 2nd- First Fridays, 5th of 9.
May 3rd- First Saturdays completed.
May 14th- 4 months to go.
May 29th- Ascension Thursday.
June 6th- First Friday, 6th of 9
June 8th- Pentecost Sunday also marks 100 days until the trip.
June 9th- Special prayers for my late Father on his birthday.
June 14th- 3 months to go
July 4th- 7th first Friday falls on our nation's birthday. Special prayers to Our Lady of Guadalupe.
July 14th- 2 months to go. All paperwork, visas and currency exchange to be done by then.
August 1st- First Friday, 8th of 9.
August 14th- 1 month to go- list of packed items to be complete.
August 15th- The Assumption
August 30th to September 1st. Labor Day wknd. Notre Dame at Miami. All packing to be done.
September 5th- Final First Friday devotion.
September 13th- Texas A&M at Notre Dame
September 14th- trip begins.
This might seem like a corny way of doing things and maybe it is, but creating a multitude of mini milestones is always giving me something to look forward to. When you are dealing with great tragedies and sorrows in life, you sometimes have to give yourself motivations and goals to not get frozen. In fact, that is the reason I decided that now is the time to go on this trip. Each little step builds on the last little step and anticipates the next. These steps maintain momentum and grace multiplies through the spiritual discipline of moving through these mile markers.
The little things hold just as much value in this as the big things, but the important thing is that you keep moving. If all you can motivate yourself to do is wash the dishes, then wash those dishes. Tiny victories are absolutely essential if you need something- anything- to break a losing streak.
There is value in the feeling that you are reaching goals and not just marking time. In the end, the feeling of realizing goals becomes the realization of the goal of surrender to God's providence and the sense of walking through life guided by the hand of God. I'm not washing the dishes as an act of drudgery but as an act of stewardship to God. In my humility before you, I offer this humbling and demeaning task. I wash this dish, I clean this bathroom.
In that moment, you become less bitter that God refuses to deliver you from the storm and more keenly aware of how He is delivering you through the storm. The perspective of life changes as you see it more as the fluid movement through seasons rather than as an uncomfortable place you are stuck in at the present moment.
Nothing in my human experience prepared me for it and I see the paradox of purgatory at work where I am stunned by the depth and length of the suffering I have faced, but even more stunned at the fact that I have faced it and am still standing. That is when the outlook moves from a bunch of bad days strung together to a painful but needed purification that the great saints called the Dark night of the Soul. Then and there, you realize that He was always with you, He never left you and that the joy of intimately knowing Him is worth all the sorrow and agony and even more.
One step becomes 10 steps. 10 steps become 100. 100 steps become a mile. A mile becomes 100 miles. 100 miles becomes a lifetime, and an occupied, focused, deliberate mind leads a will, step by step through life and the joy that awaits us.
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