Author: Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSP

We were told numberless times going into Election Day that this election was the most important election of our lifetime. On this weekend after casting our votes, we’re still living on the adrenaline of heightened concerns, hopes, and emotions…

At this point for our emotional and spiritual health, we may want to hit PAUSE and remember that no matter what is decided in this election, God has a purpose that unfolds in history, a purpose that cannot be overturned.

There is no way for us to know how this will end, no real possibility of us figuring it out or of changing the outcome to what we think the final result should be. And even after all the results are in, there will be heated discussion and commentary on whether the results are accurate. Hope is the belief that we are held in the midst of this chaos. Hope is the belief that we are cared for most tenderly even if we cannot see in the way forward how God is leading us.

Today I invite you to let the dust settle and to soak in the sense of safety and trust that is the bedrock of Psalm 23.

I recently saw on my Facebook wall a quote which read: “The older you get, the more quiet you become. Life humbles you so deeply as you age. You realize how much nonsense you’ve wasted time on.”

Until we come to terms that life is a gradual, difficult, gloriously transformative undoing of everything we have built up for ourselves and of ourselves, it will continue to perplex and, in some cases, embitter us.

Just the other day I sat beside a priest friend, sharing my spiritual journey, my self-discoveries that were not that pretty. Of course, I had explanations ready at hand. I thought they added perspective. My friend said, “Those are just excuses. Everything you’re saying is just ego.”

Just ego…. The nonsense I’ve wasted time on.

We get caught up in our younger years in wildly exciting things, dreams for what we could do or be, determination to make improvements, change things, build things….

But life tends to lead us out of these sunshine beginnings into the stormy years of our undoing. Then back into sunshine, then onward to shadow….

The elders of the Jews who were tasked with rebuilding the house of God in Jerusalem, had been sent there from their captivity in exile in Babylon. The glories of the former Temple, all that Jerusalem had been for the Chosen People since King David, had been lost. They were beginning again, and anyone who has begun again to rebuild from the ashes knows that it is hard and discouraging work. To rebuild is to face the unknown, to construct in faith, to hope in God, to place ourselves under his mercy, to walk blindly along the paths marked out for us…at his bidding, for his glory, according to his plan.

In the Gospel, we can imagine Mary standing on the outside of the crowd that surrounded the house where her Son was preaching. With his words, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and act on it,” Mary’s heart had to have skipped a beat. The relationship of mother-son that she had known since Jesus’ Bethlehem-birth had now to give way to something larger that she didn’t yet understand. These words, certainly a confirmation of her holiness, defined the moment when she realized definitively that her motherhood was not her own, that it never was meant to be her private joy. All that she had been in her mysterious and magnificent YES to the Father, was now public “property,” so to speak, for everyone else’s benefit. She had to move over to make room for us. I often think of what Mary must have been thinking and feeling as she turned and walked home that evening….

In our lives, we are led into progressively deeper poverty in which all we once knew as normal becomes shrouded in a future of uncertainty. We walk forward lighter, simpler, more quiet and humble, perhaps less significant. If this is happening to you rejoice. You are being led on the path of holiness which can only culminate in glory.

“Your inward life is now sprouting, bringing forth fruit” (Sgs 4;13)

It is time.
It is time to forgive yourself…
It is time to forgive yourself for what you didn’t see.
What you didn’t understand…
What you couldn’t feel…

It is time to forgive yourself…
For the people you didn’t save…
What you didn’t become…
Who you didn’t save…
What you didn’t change…

It is time to discover the beauty of falling leaves…
Letting go…
Trusting transition…
Blessing the winter…
Hoping the spring…

It is time to rest…
In the silent spaces of sorrow and silence…
In the hurt and pain of wounds and shame…
In the broken and fragmented and lost…

It is time to believe…
In the inward spring…
The new life sprouting…
The blossoming and growing and ripening…

I find transitions challenging. Leaving the familiar behind puts me back in the fragile place where I wonder if I’m good enough… If I’ll make it… If anyone cares…

I’m sure no one can see the swirl of emotions and thoughts and general confusion that reigns within, sweeping away the secure self-image that just weeks before had been mine.

Transitions are difficult times of immense grace, severe gifts of mercy, gentle or drastic pruning that makes way for new blossoms that unexpectedly surprise us with new futures and joy.

I often will put myself “forehead to forehead” with Jesus in prayer—an image from the lay mystic Gabrielle Bossis in her popular spiritual classic He and I. Praying in this quiet, unreflective way that suspends all thought and straining opens my heart.

And during transitions, I need to open my heart. To believe that my Beloved One is at work within me. So one day recently I asked Jesus what he had to say to me regarding a transition I was in.

He said, “You silly willy….”

That absolutely got my attention!

“You silly willy. Your heart has been longing for more. You’ve been aching under the strain of all that has been your daily life. Here I am helping you out. So just go with the flow….”

The lightness of Jesus’ touch was exactly what I needed.

“Your inward life is now sprouting, bringing forth fruit.
What a beautiful paradise unfolds within you.
When I’m near you, I smell aromas of the finest spice,
For many clusters of my exquisite fruit
Now grow within your inner garden” (Sgs 4:13-14 TPT).

Transitions can be initiated by yourself or others. By your decisions for change and growth. By others’ decisions which may not take into account your needs. They can seem positive or negative. Hope-filled or disastrous. Be the beginning of something new or the disastrous end of something gratefully over. Tactfully orchestrated or bluntly dropped on you.

In the transition, in the threshold between what was and what will be, God is at work for you and within you. Outside my window the wind is caressing the trees. The leaves are almost singing as they rustle against one another. Those leaves did nothing to bring themselves into life. They are the fruit of the living tree. They sprouted from the ends of the twigs in the early spring, emerged into maturity, and are now getting ready to be released, to become the lovely shades of fall colors that are pushed along by the cold winds of the late autumn.

Friends, in whatever part of the cycle we find ourselves, we can be sure that we are part of the living Tree, the living Vine.

We receive…
Loved into being…
Nurtured into maturity…
Gently moved into the freedom of trusting the winter…

Bearing within us the cycle of hope…
of gentle winter and determined spring…
of releasing death and innocently new life…
of Calvary and the Garden of the Resurrection…

Live within the Tabernacle of your Heart where Jesus is always living… loving… giving… blessing….

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-68vh8-eb7ff5

When we nourish ourselves on the Word of God we gradually are able to see an unexpected, unearned future: new life, a new heart, a new future, a new relationship with God. The word of the Lord became a part of Ezekiel’s being when the prophet was told at his calling, “Eat the Scroll,” and it can become a part of our being as well. When we regularly digest God’s word, options become available to us that we couldn’t anticipate.

Credit: Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

The Power of the Father, compelled by His love,
Descended and dwelt in a virgin womb.
St Ephrem

“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” (John 1:14)

Dwelt… Dwelt in a virgin womb. Dwelt among us.

Various words are used to describe the way God dwelt among us. It has been rendered: God tabernacled among us. God pitched his tent among us. The Revised English version translates this verse more literally this way: “And the word became flesh and pitched his tent among us, and we gazed at his glory; glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

The first time God pitched his tent among us is recorded in the book of Exodus. God had accompanied his people as they fled Egypt, dwelling among them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night. For the Israelites who had spent 400 years in Egypt, culminating in the whole bitter fate of slavery, this new visible appearance of the presence of God to them must have been amazing. They had cried out for freedom and God had responded. And even more they hadn’t escaped Egypt like criminals breaking out of jail and on the run. No, the Lord was coming with them on the journey to the Promised Land.

In the wandering years as the Israelites made their way through the desert, Moses built at the Lord’s instruction a meeting tent outside the community. The tent-tabernacle-place of God’s dwelling was the center of the worship of Yahweh by the people of Israel from shortly after the exodus until it was replaced by Solomon’s temple around 960 BC. The tabernacle was filled with the glory of God. That glory was so radiant that when Moses left the meeting tent after having spoken with God, his face shone so brightly it had to be covered with a veil. Joshua, Moses’ assistant, remained in the tent.

Wouldn’t that be neat? To dwell in a space that was filled with the glory of God? To just stay there… Stay. Abide. Dwell.

God’s dwelling with the Israelites gave them a chance to dwell with him if they wanted. He was there. He was waiting.

When Solomon dedicated the Temple he had built, the glory of God filled it. “When Solomon finished praying, fire flashed down from heaven and burned up the burnt offerings and sacrifices, and the glorious presence of the LORD filled the Temple” (2 Chronicles 7:1).

However, right before the exile into Babylon about 400 years, Ezekiel saw in a vision the glory of the Lord leaving his place above the cherubim of the ark in the Holy of Holies and exiting the temple. The Lord was leaving Jerusalem, opening it up to the invasion of its enemies.

As the faithful remnant was taken into exile in Babylon, God went with them to protect them. He was with Daniel, Ezekiel, Esther and the other believing exiles wherever they were in foreign lands. God dwelt with them, pitched his tent, so to speak, wherever they were to protect them, never leaving them utterly abandoned.

600 years later, John writes that the glory of God has come back, has pitched his tent among us once again in the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. Ephrem’s image is powerful: God was compelled by his love for us—his love for us was so great that he couldn’t resist the power of what his love wanted to do…. To descend and dwell in a virgin’s womb. The word became flesh and pitched his tent among us.

When Jesus returned to heaven he left his glory on earth in the tabernacles of our Churches, where he continues to dwell. God had told Moses to fill a lamp with pure oil to burn perpetually in the Tabernacle or Meeting Tent to signify God’s presence. Today a sanctuary lamp continues to burn to signify that the Blessed Sacrament is presence, God’s glorious presence, the glory of God on earth.

God pitches his tent with you and me, wherever we are, wherever we need him. Longing to meet us, he hopes that we desire to meet him.

Teresa of Avila, reflecting on the state of her heart, this place where the Lord had pitched his tent, once prayed, “O my Lord, since it seems you have determined to save me, I beseech Your Majesty…don’t you think it would be good…if the inn where you have to dwell continually would not get so dirty?” Her famous book on mysticism The Interior Castle describes the lifelong spiritual journey by which we enter into seven mansions (also called dwelling places) which are stages to getting closer to God.

My heart wants to grow in hospitality toward this divine Loving Leader who wants to pitch his tent and abide with me. He who will go with me even in the humiliating and messy times of desert wandering and exile, who will speak with me and listen to me, who will pitch his tent in the tabernacle of my heart and fill me with the Spirit and the glory of God.

I want to be a Joshua who stays in the tent, surrounded with the glory of God, soaking in his presence, being transformed by it, loved and mentored and forgiven and recreated by it. And it is for this reason that I and so many seek out the Eucharist in the Mass and in adoration.

You are entirely a source of amazement,
From whatever side we may seek You:
You are close at hand, yet distant—
Who shall reach you?
St Ephrem, Faith 4:11