Last week, I described how from the darkness of the microscopy room the great light of love was made present between my Cell Biology Research students, all because one student recognized his need. We see our weaknesses, and that allows the love of God to be made present in our hearts.
This does not always require for us to be at our weakest, at the bottom of the pit.
Sometimes we are at great heights, despite our faults, and in those spaces, the true love we all desire, the love which makes all things new and good, is more fully realized.
“‘The gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.’ When we hear that, we often think that the Church is under siege, and she is. But not because she was attacked. No, the Church is active. The Church is sent out to confront the darkness. We are called to do as Christ did and go in to the darkness and bring light and healing.” ~Fr. Matt Hovde CSC
We all have the ability to love
We all have the ability to fight the darkness, both inside ourselves and in the world.
We all are enough. We, this rag tag group of seemingly foolish people, were sent out in to the world, called in to the darkness, out to unknown lands, to defeat the darkness. We were given this special task, not because we are strong, not because we are qualified by any means, but because God trusts us.
You mean enough to God that He trusts you to save the world.
My students were able to sense their teammate’s need for love, for support, for encouragement, and that transformed him in to a more confident cell biologist. They sat in the darkness, literally, and they confronted it without fear. Even though the image was not the best out there, they trusted that it would be enough to share that data in their defense.
Small though it was, that little gift was even enough for the TA’s grading the students.
Not because the images were great, but because they were chosen out of love.
However, sometimes the darkness does not seem as simple as it may be. Sometimes we are called in to the darkness, and we feel completely consumed by it. And in those moments, we feel completely alone. Although I could go in to a description that we are never truly alone, I will simply leave a link to the story of the Little Lamb, wherein I describe the loneliness of those of us who know Christ.
Because of the many hardships of this world, many souls who have been walking with Christ for years are faced with the hard reality of walking in the darkness alone.
And yet we never reach out because we do not want to make someone else’s suffering any greater.
We never think that maybe, just maybe, we are in need of prayers too.
I know that I tend to forget that too.
Perhaps I have forgotten this because my cross is one of loneliness. I know that I am different, and I know that my lifestyle is not like most people. Despite the fact that I know in my heart that my family loves me and that Christ walks with me every day, on my right side, I still feel the crippling loneliness that comes with a life lived for the Lord.
The number of times I have been intentionally left out are more than people would know.
And yet I always respond to their calls when they finally remember me.
They ignore me, and I love them anyways. That’s what my family taught me. That is what my Jesus taught me. I do not know why my love is forgotten, but then again, the love our Jesus has for us is forgotten. He is so ignored that He sits alone in churches all over the world. Empty pews in empty churches.
Jesus has healed me of the fear of calling out for help and being left alone.
But before I even think of explaining how God healed myself of this weakness, I want to emphasize again that we need to be praying for our priests. They are doing the most important work in the world, but because of the sins of a few, because of the hardness of our own hearts, we forget them. I may feel lonely, but these men of God are far more lonely because of their vocation.
This became a painful reality to me a couple weeks ago.
One of the sweetest priests in the world, a priest with a heart like Saint Therese of Lisieux and great love for family, looked at the congregation and stifled tears as he said this phrase:
“Jesus sent out His disciples in pairs, but nowadays we are sent out alone because no one will walk with us.”
Even now, weeks later, this moment brings bitter tears to my eyes. Not just because of the lonely words of this wonderful little priest, but because of the response of the congregation.
There wasn’t a response.
This poor priest was calling for help, desperately asking for prayers in his own homily, showing the greatest humility that I have ever seen from a priest in my entire life, and no one made the Sign of the Cross, no one bowed their head, no one cried, no one smiled at him. This priest shared what so few could, the loneliness of his vocation, and no one cared.
Well…one person cared, but she’s not enough help on her own for such a holy man of God.
So I ask my Dear Readers, please start to pray for priests. Maybe one of y’all who is holier than me, whose prayers are more efficacious than my own, will be able to console at least one of our Spiritual Fathers.
I know that these prayers will be efficacious because of my own experience, the most powerful experience I had during the Young Adult Retreat nearly a month ago.
There was a Healing Night as a part of the retreat. Before the Blessed Sacrament, souls lined up to be prayed over by priests and lay people who were acquainted with healing prayers. From the pew, I prayed over their hearts as they came forward. The retreat team received word that there was great healing, but there were plenty of souls who did not receive anything.
During the healing prayer, I felt a little breeze over my stomach. It did not feel like something of healing, but I recognized it. Knowing that nothing happened, I returned to my pew to pray. There I was reminded of my lonely feeling in the darkness.
I did not receive healing in that prayer like I wanted, but rather in the greatest darkness.
At two o’clock in the morning, I started to feel terrified. Now, I have been a mental health patient for well over a decade, and I can say with great confidence that this sort of fear was not of my mind, nor was it a justifiable fear. It was not a safe fear for my soul, but a great danger. Within seconds of the fear, the place where I felt the breeze on my stomach suddenly tensed up to the point that I could hardly move.
For an hour, I laid in the darkness in horrible fear and pain.
In an attempt to fight the darkness around me, I turned on a Christian playlist. If I could not pray, then maybe there was a song that could help.
Then these lyrics came on:
“And if you need me in the middle of the night, my dear, I'll stay awake till morning light and chase away your fears” ~My Only Love, Matt Maher
After hearing those words, I knew what I had to do. Pulling myself out of bed, I limped across the room, out the door, and in to the cold stairwell and called my boyfriend. I didn’t really know what to do, but I knew that he would at the very least answer. After all, we prayed for each other enough. Maybe he would wake up.
And he did.
For nearly two hours, my beloved Shawn prayed over me with the Rosary and with spontaneous prayer as I stifled screams in to my pillow and sobbed without much reproof. Eventually the pain subsided.
But I was still filled with terror.
Shawn did not stop praying for me. Even though it seemed like his prayers and my desire to receive those graces were not enough, he did not stop. He did not leave the darkness. Instead, he lead me to pray the only words that would heal me, the only words that would defeat the darkness which surrounded me.
“Repeat after me,” he said, “Jesus, I trust in You.”
“Jesus, I trust in You.”
“Again,” he said, even more sweetly, “Jesus, I trust in You.”
“Jesus I trust in You,” I started to yawn.
“Jesus I trust in You,” Shawn whispered.
“Jesus, I trust in You.”
Healed by the name of Jesus, I finally fell asleep.
Dear Readers, we may not feel like we are enough. However, we are enough. We are enough because we are never alone. We each carry Christ in our hearts, and we bring Him with us in to the darkness. It is a great grace to call upon others to help us fight the darkness of this world, because it allows our Jesus to do the work He loves to do.
You are enough, Jesus.
My Dear Readers, whether we are great preachers, great writers, great evangelists, great spouses, great teachers, great workers, great ministers, great healers, or not, there is only one thing that we have to do to defeat the darkness:
Bring people to Jesus.
Remind them that He is enough for us, that He is enough to save us, that He is enough for our weak hearts to be made whole.
My Shawn brought me to Jesus in the darkness, and I was healed of not only whatever the devil wanted to attack me with, but also of my inability to bring others in to my own darkness. My pride was shot down that day, and I thank my Jesus for allowing me to endure that suffering for the sake of my Salvation.
You may suffer my Dear Reader
But you are enough for God, and He is enough for you.
Let us run in to the darkness without fear and bring all of Christ’s Little Ones Home by our love.
