Running on Fumes

Yesterday was the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Renewed a simple offering of suffering, spoken interiorly but with the heart, during the Consecration.

It is a prayer from the Raccolta: Heart of Jesus, Victim of Love, vouchsafe that I become a living, holy, pleasing holocaust in Thy sight.

An old monk from an abbey told me three and a half years ago to pray this and it would bring joy. Well, the joy is one thing--but he neglected to mention it would also secure more suffering! Guess that is the point!

My dear Lord! A visit to an adult child and family tested the little gain of energy following the major depletion of six weeks prior. A comment was made, noticing less energy than the year before. Well, the body does age! But it is more than that. The attitude was commended, but was told that the adult child could always tell when the pain was worse--that there was a kind of pushing through which made the sufferer seem a bit ingenuine.

Perhaps so! It is one way to describe it! I suppose it is ingenuine to experience agony and act chipper (as possible) at the same time. But, the adult child was told that this is what Jesus asks of us, and the Scriptures throughout: I say it again, rejoice! Count it all joy.... Pick up your cross daily and follow Me. Sow with tears; reap with joy. I explained the path in which one is to practice the virtues, and to attempt to mask personal suffering if possible, and if not possible, to at least offer it with love to Jesus for His use--and then that is the joy of the whole matter of suffering. It is more blessed to give than to receive.

The prayer renewed yesterday (and off and on throughout the year, with the vows of suffering fully renewed and received by a priest on the Feast of St. Pio) DOES ask the Heart of Jesus to secure that the petitioner be a holy and a pleasing holocaust in HIS sight.

Once more, we have to consider how Jesus views matters of life, of suffering. Yes, the petitioner asks to be made, also, a living holocaust. So the pain is going to be best utilized when one is alive. That is sort of like the Scripture that states that hope which is seen is no hope at all. A body that is dead does not feel ripping pain in its members! It is feels no pain at all.

But being a living holocaust (in HIS sight) means more, for the interior, once more, is what God views. The interior lives on, and it is in the interior where unadulterated joy can exist despite the exterior pain. And the interior joy can exist within the soul, despite the interior mental and emotional pain which many people experience--so many people.

The saints such as Joan of Arc whose feast day was yesterday, also, became living, holy, pleasing holocausts in His sight. And they had the interior joy, and that manifested in peak experiences of suffering, and manifested from the interior to the exterior through a countenance or words, or no words but essence.

Forgiveness is the fertilizer of joy. It seems so. Forgiveness allows love to grow, and there can be no joy without love. And the action of fertilizer within a plant is not visibly seen--not the action. But the reaction is observed in growth, in the beauty of fresh leaves, of blooms, of inches on branches, pine flowers turning to cones, of tiny fruits forming, then burgeoning into luscious edibles. Jesus points out the tiniest of seeds grows into a mustard plant which can become more like a tree.

Well, energy welled up three days ago, finally, and then the body was called upon in the line of duty--and it was a rather joyful matter, yet once more quite demanding physically. So now the body is in physical agony, and the thoughts must be kept moderated, for the abode is in disarray, laundry needs to be folded, counters cleared. And there is little energy to "do."

The body actually burns with pain, particularly with nerve pain shooting here and there like flames licking the legs and the heat filling the torso. The head fills with the smoky dizziness that can accompany an expenditure of much energy, pushing through on few fumes.

It is at times like this, that one must calmly reflect upon the prayer offering, and know that Jesus has vouchsafed the soul what it asked. Living? Check. Pleasing? Hope so. Loving? Didn't think so but from what other source than God-Is-Love did the body and soul manage the past few days of being called upon in active charity? Of course it is God and His love that did so! Holocaust? Yes, check.

Then, one must reflect on nost so much the burning pain or the fact the body is running on fumes, but must see in the rear view mirror and the side mirrors, that the breath remains, the heart beating, and the day dawns green with hope albeit through fog-smoked windows.

Not so painful running on fumes, for joy is in the fumes, too. Just don't step on the gas at this point!