I offer this as my Christmas gift to the members of the Forum. May it bless you as it has blessed me. A joyfilled, blessed and Merry Christmas to y'all. Silouan, her monk in the Ozarks
"To take hold of Jesus by His Heart"
Isaiah 66.10-14; Psalm 131; Matthew 18.1-4
by Father Thomas Dynetius of the Mother of Sorrows
There is so much splendor still to be found in His Sacred Heart; it is true, that it is pierced open with a lance so to spill His price for our ransom, but it is His ultimate _expression of love. His is a place of refuge from the enemy�s grasp, for it is a Sepulchre for the soul. It is a furnace of love where all of one�s impurities would be purged in the flame of love. It is a place where every mark of stain and sin is cleansed and washed away in the streams of His mercy and grace. It is all one needs in life. But, �it is only when all you have is Jesus you realize that you actually need only Jesus.� The worldly securities we rely on fade away, leaving us dry, abandoned and insecure more than ever. The cleverness of our mind soon gives way to despair and hopelessness when the struggles of life strangle us with worries and drown us in anxieties of our future. As long as we have other means to rely on, as long as we have other supports to hold on, we simply are not ready to cling to Him as the only source of support and strength. But look at a little child! He knows of no other security even in his fears except that of the strong protecting arms of his father; he knows of no other experience of tenderness than the loving embrace of his mother. No matter how mischievous he is, with a smile he can win the hearts of all; he knows the love of the mother is always there for him; he knows the protection of his father is always with him. But this is what we desire as we enter into His Heart. �Our God is much kinder than we believe, and He is content with a glance, a sigh of love.� But we do not want to be content with giving Him the minimum we could give. We must give our all since He has given His all to us. And so, all we need to do is to �take hold of Jesus by His Heart.� If Hs Heart is the abode of love, then we must take hold of Him by our reciprocating love: total, unconditional, self-sacrificing love. �Let us then hold Him prisoner, this God who becomes the beggar of our love� (Saint Th�r�se of the Child Jesus, Letter to her sister Leonie, July 12, 1896, Letters, Vol. II, Page 965/6) because to take Him prisoner of love, to satisfy our Beggar God: this is the sweetness of our life.
We need Him as the sweetness of our lives. But do we not know that to give ourselves to Him is to lose our identity in Him? Do we not know that to accept Him into our lives is to open our lives to the vulnerability of love, to the embrace of the Cross, to agony and anguish of heart? We consume Him in the Sacred Food, but He consumes us in love from within. We embrace Him with His Cross, and He overburdens us with His love from the Cross until we are crushed beneath the weight of His love that pervades our every being, making us perfect victims of love. From beneath the Cross, weighed down by its burden, we cry out, �Is this how You treat your friends!� And He would answer, �That is how I loved you!� And so we desire Him; we are still drawn to Him because we recognize that �there is only one thing to do here below: to love Jesus, and win souls for Him!� But we recognize that all we have is today, which is the gift of His love. And so we cry out, as Saint Th�r�se of the Child Jesus did,
�My life is a moment, a passing hour;
My life is a moment, which flies away from me;
O my God, you know that for loving you on earth
I have only today.�
We fear losing the eternity because all we have is today to love Him, with all our weaknesses and limitations. We fear our empty-handedness in not being able to give Him more than we could manage because all we have is our nothingness, our emptiness; we fear our helplessness in not being able to prove our love for Him because all we have is our littleness. And so we pray, like a little child that seeks the protection of his father�s arms, like a little child that seeks the comfort of the loving arms of his mother, saying,
�What does it matter, Lord, if the future is bleak!
I cannot pray for tomorrow's needs�
Keep my heart pure,
Keep me in your shade just for today�� (Saint Th�r�se of the Child Jesus).
