Tabernacle of the Heart II: Finding Our Way to the Treasures of the Heart

Published on by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSP1 Comment

Twenty years ago I was tormented by constant headaches. These headaches would last for days and were seemingly resistant to anything I tried to be rid of them. They became a constant companion of my every day, they were a torment of continually sleepless nights.

I gave up on OTC medicine to lessen the pounding in my head and just plowed through my work, trying to push them out of my awareness. It never worked but there was always hope in trying.

A friend shared with me a book that held on one page, in one sentence, through one word the key that begin my journey to a headache free. Surrender. Surrender to the pain. Accept it. Welcome it.

The natural thing for the body to do is to fight it. Instead welcome it.

So I did. And the headaches immediately lessened in intensity. I was elated and curious.

Why? Why did such a simple change in attitude make such a dramatic change on my physical pain?

Shortly after, a friend of the community visited. In the conversation I mentioned something about what I was noticing and she said she suffered from headaches herself. She told me that instead of welcoming them to get rid of them, I should be welcoming them and enter into the space of the welcoming, into the enlarging of my heart that was surrendering and accepting.

Armed with this suggestion I went about figuring out how I was supposed to do this. My heart. I had spent so much time focusing on my headaches, that befriending my heart was a foreign concept.

My heart.

That night I sat up in my room, sleepless as usual. My heart. I know I am feeling something. In my heart. I don’t feel anything. For several hours I sat in the silent darkness trying to become aware of what I felt. Trying to feel my feelings that somehow were related to the gradually dulling ache in my head.

Each night I took the journey out of my head into my body where the tight and taut muscles mirrored the tightness of the headaches, or perhaps they created the headaches. Who knows. Gradually, as I explored the physical sensations of tension, I found my way to my heart.

It too was tight, but in a different way. During those endlessly sleepless nights, I sat at the door of my heart and learned to feel its pain and to describe it with different words. Closed. Defended. Guarded. Shrouded. Withdrawn.

In this odyssey through the sensations of my physicality which brought me to the door of my heart, my headaches lessened until eventually they ceased altogether.

There at heart’s door I learned that I couldn’t pry open the door as I had tried to rid myself of the headaches. I couldn’t demand. It worked on no timetable of mine. The heart responds not to aggression or fearful pleas.

I had to wait.

Welcome its pain. Its fearful closing in on itself. Till it knew it was safe to trust me with its deepest sorrows and its even deeper treasures.

Can you stay with your heart’s deepest pain? Can you sit with some physical pain and ask it for its story? Take a deep breath, feel the way you are held by gravity and by the even deeper Abyss of God’s embrace. Say quietly: I am here. I am yours. I am waiting on you. I will wait always and forever. Come.

Photo by cyrus gomez on Unsplash

How we need our Mother today!

Published on by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSPLeave a comment

August… the month we traditionally think of heaven.

August, 2020.

Hmm. This year, I sometimes find myself wishing I could escape to heaven, at least in my imagination. It’s on a lot of people’s minds. Some of them wonder why “heaven” doesn’t do something about what’s been happening on earth this year. And between the Marian feasts of the Assumption (August 15) and the Queenship of Mary (August 22), the “vision” of heaven, though beautiful, seems remote from the struggles breaking our lives and hearts apart as the summer winds to a close.

The lyrics to my favorite hymn for the Feast of the Assumption paint a lovely picture of Mary in the blessed joy and glory of heaven: Who is she ascends so far / next the heavenly King? / Round about whom angels fly / and her praises sing.

The loving, living, giving, and suffering of her earthly life over, Mary now reigns in heaven as Queen of heaven and earth. It could almost seem a kind of well-earned eternal retirement, or a victory march, when she took her place in her coronation at the right hand of her Son. As though she lives now in some inaccessible heavenly “castle” where only royalty live!

Mary, however, as every one of her liturgical feasts reminds us, is a Mother. Still a Mother. Always a Mother. Our Mother. My Mother.

Mothers, by the beauty and grace of their sublime vocation, have an almost-superhuman willingness to sacrifice for the wellbeing of their children. Motherhood is the root and foundation of every other accomplishment and expertise a mother may bring to her role.

And how we need a Mother today! A woman who has been where we are. An exile. An immigrant. A widow. She who stood powerless but with faith beneath the cross as she watched her Son die. The woman who was the first disciple, listening to Jesus, lending her ear and then her heart to his bidding, translating it into action of love and obedient trust. We need this mother, teacher, and queen of the bewildered apostles who watched Jesus return to his Father and who, under his Mother’s guidance, began to find their way into the world as his ambassadors and witnesses.

This year, let’s focus on Mary who is standing next to us, each of us, the Mother we so long for. I don’t know about you, but I feel my mother next to me, even though she can no longer be physically near. It’s been said you never really get over the death of your mother, that you still need to feel her near.

This year we need our Mother more than ever. She does not remain in heaven, but comes into the lives of every one of us. Each of us has our own unique connection to her that grows through the years, shifting and changing, deepening and transforming.

If we feel confused, if we feel angry, if we feel lost, if our hearts are anxious, broken, or numb, she holds us in spirit as only she can, as only a Mother knows how to do.

We need our Mother this year, because so many around us need a mother.

A mother’s ear.

A mother’s embrace that says everything will be alright.

A mother’s patience that loves even as it allows a person the freedom to grow.

A mother’s heart that wisely offers the words, “Do whatever he tells you.”

The Assumption and the Queenship of Mary invite us all, this year, to be a part of her motherly strength and loving care for the brothers and sisters of her Son.

Soul of Mary, sanctify me.
Heart of Mary, inflame me.
Hands of Mary, support me.
Feet of Mary, direct me.
Immaculate eyes of Mary, look upon me.
Lips of Mary, speak for me.
Sorrows of Mary, strengthen me.
O Mary, hear me.
In the wound of the Heart of Jesus, hide me.
Let me never be separated from thee.
From my enemy defend me.
At the hour of my death call me,
And bid me to come to thine Immaculate Heart;
That thus I may come to the Heart of Jesus,
And there with the saints praise thee
For all eternity. Amen. 

The Raccolta

Click here for a VIDEO Adoration Guide, Entrusting Ourselves to Mary



How Jesus Frees Us from Negative Thinking

Published on by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSPLeave a comment

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-phucm-e72a56

These days of pandemic and lockdown are creating a new pandemic of mental health issues. In this podcast I address some ways in which Jesus helps us free us from the stick, heavy, and negative thinking that is part of the difficult days we are living. We’ll talk about why it’s hard to get rid of these thoughts, what Jesus knows that we forget and how he helps us get free from these sticky thoughts, ways to intentionally focus on the freeing power of truth, and more.

The Tabernacle of the Heart: Where Christ Abides Within Us

Published on by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSPLeave a comment

“I know you will welcome me into your house,
for I am covered by your covenant of mercy and love.
So I come to your sanctuary with deepest awe
to bow in worship and adore you.”  (Ps 5:3f. TPT)

In these days I connect with my parents with a video call each afternoon. It has been a year since I’ve been with them and it may be another year or more before I am able to go home. Being together that 20 minutes each afternoon is a gift. As the weeks go by, however, I know they are wishing they could just hug me close and bring me into their apartment, keep me safe with them, and just…be…together. Close together.

I find myself dreaming of what it will be like…that day when I can walk into their apartment once more and be wrapped in their protective hugs…

“I know you will welcome me into your house…”

This forced separation from others is making me more sensitive to the intense longing to please them, to serve them, to protect them, to hold them, to be held by them, to be welcomed and wanted, my heart watered by their tears and warmed by the sunshine of their smiles. We are all really one after all. I am beginning to sense that.

“I know you will welcome me into your house…”

We have been suffering also, many of us, from an enforced separation from the house of the Lord. Although I have a chapel in my “house” here at the convent, I worry about those who haven’t had the experience for so long of being welcomed by Christ into his house through the Eucharist celebrated as a parish on Sundays and even, for some, each day. And even if we have the immense privilege of once again going into God’s house, we cannot be close to each other.

We all need this divine welcome, even more than we need the hugs we so long for from loved ones from whom we are separated.

“So I come to your sanctuary with deepest awe
to bow in worship and adore you.”

The sanctuary lamp that has burned continually during this pandemic next to the tabernacle is the sentinel that at once announces the presence of Christ in the Eucharist and keeps him company with the flickering of a single candle representing our hearts’ desire to be with him who won for us our salvation.

God’s own love for humanity compels him to take the initiative in providing for humanity this opportunity to experience his welcome, to be comforted by his compassionate abiding, to find the way to return to him in Jesus Christ his Son.

The tabernacle in our Churches, the sanctuary lamp that bravely remains lit in the dark to point the way to the Savior, announces the meeting between heaven and earth, of God and man, of divinity and humanity, of justice and mercy, of wisdom and ignorance, of mercy and sin.

St. Ephrem writes:

When the Lord came down to earth to mortal beings
   He created them again, a new creation, like the angels,
mingling within them Fire and Spirit. (Faith 10:9)

Mary’s womb was the first “tabernacle” or abode for Jesus. How the strings of her heart were tuned to the Father of the One who had been conceived in her. She could hear the Father’s every whisper, feel the import of his every desire. She went with haste to serve her cousin Elizabeth. She went without fear into Egypt. She went without resentment to walk with her Son to Calvary. She went without sadness to the mount from which Jesus would ascend to the Father.

St. Ephrem asserts:

“The Power of the Father, compelled by His love,
descended and dwelt in a virgin womb.”

This same Love dwells in the abode of the Tabernacle in your parish Church. He is as active in the Tabernacle as he was in the womb of Mary.

When we receive Jesus in Holy Communion, he “tabernacles” within our hearts. He takes up there his abode with the Father and the Spirit. Mary, who carried him in her womb for nine months, can teach us how to be attentive to him, led by him, welcomed by him.

“I have found heaven on earth, since heaven is God, and God is in my soul” (St Elizabeth of the Trinity).

Photo Credit: Juan Pablo Arias

God’s Promise: “I am acting” (Podcast)

Published on by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSP1 Comment

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-n7mwi-e4e324

Jeannette and I talk today about an experience at prayer and selection of my journal:

Iam acting:
within what breaks, I am vast Abyss
within the falling, I am depthless Depth
in the emptying, I am the Silence

Stop
Shed your mind’s unconscious gossip and still your Heart
Touch your forehead to the earth
   …My carpet
       a floral carpet Crimson Red
       on which you bumble and tumble

in My Glory.

___

“Who could have thought my shrivel’d heart
Could have recover’d greennesse?
George Herbert, The Flower

Image Credit: Il Ragazzo; Cathopic

How not to become an “injustice collector” (Podcast)

Published on by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSPLeave a comment

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-huk8q-e2f9ba

I’m almost 57. Fifty seven years of people, situations, issues, reaction, desires, disappointment, dreams, loves…. 

This year on my birthday, I’m making the resolution to “not look back.” 

To not look back at disappointment.

To not look back at rejection.

To not look back at loss. 

Of course, looking back is important to do at times. I actually began to rediscover parts of my life during the imposed solitude of the pandemic that I hadn’t taken the time to integrate precisely because I hadn’t looked back. I needed to take the time to “connect the psychological-emotional-spiritual dots” between what I had experienced and lived through and what I was still carrying today in my heart and mind. 

Making the connections is important. By making connections we can surrender to God what he has helped us recognize. We can let it go. We can understand it more deeply, even recognize where we may have been mistaken in our perception of what happened….