Jesus in the Eucharist

I have had the privilege, three weeks now, of spending time with the Lord Jesus in the Eucharist. It is called Eucharistic Adoration. And how Jesus has set me free! I have realized so starkly that He is not about condemnation (the devil's great work) but about setting me free. I have realized that confessing my sins has truly set me free! I know this sounds cliche-ish but I have understood my Savior so much more fully, have felt so much more as His sister b/c I have simply obeyed Him. "To behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His Temple..." (Psalm 27) These are not empty word but alive words that are fulfilled today...all my thoughts, my joys, my duties are His...I hope never to stop listening to Him and asking for His grace, His power, to please His Father. That is all my Lord Jesus was about was pleasing and obeying the Father and what else is there but this? What greater felicity, what greater joy, what greater time spent than feeding on His Word - Jesus Christ. This is all....this is all that matters....this is the pearl of great price and look what we receive! Divinization! I don't know what that will be like but it is real....it is the only REALITY and the only thing worth living for....pleasing and obeying the Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit. I pity anyone who finds life on this earth more appealing.

Jesus in the

The Room of the Soul

Remember that the virtue of humility is the solution of all our troubles, a sure and quick remedy in all our temptations. Let your concern and terror be this, that the devil take advantage of distressing moods and make entrance. Remember that humility is the antidote. Your place at that moment is not on the lofty heights of self or studying wounded self-love but on your knees before the crucifix, seeing what sin has done to Jesus. Stifle the murmuring complaint of whining vanity and blinded pride. Let the recording angels hear this confession: “I confess to Almighty God. that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word and deed through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.”(2) Fr Thomas A Judge


I know my blogs are boring - no pictures. But I hope to create pictures in the window of the soul that one may look into that room and see what furnishings lie there. Also what condition they are in. Is the furniture dusty? Is it crowded with knick knacks? Is it so cluttered that the beauty of the room is choked? Is it hard to move around in there - are you prevented from kneeling if necessary? How is my interior life? And does the Holy Spirit find welcome, worship and listening heart there?

“If any man think himself to be something, whereas he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.”(Gal. 6:3) Subject to many infirmities, man comes wailing into life, lives in fear, leaves it in anguish. Inconstant by nature, the sport of change, now he is glad, now he is sad. He needs everything, is dependent for everything, can do nothing of himself. He cannot guide himself; he is blind in his judgments. He regrets the past that is gone, is suspicious of the future; he grasps at the present which escapes him. He struggles against adversity. Prosperity intoxicates him, praise makes him proud; humiliation irritates and crushes him, anger makes him insane. Laziness enervates him; sensuality devours him. He is the plaything of his passions. His infancy is spent in helplessness, his youth in frivolity, his mature years in cares and worries, his old age in dotage. His mind is subject to ignorance, his will to uncertainty, his heart is tried by so many deceptions. Ennui inexorable weighs on his existence and he becomes a burden to himself. There is not a sense nor member of his body which does not know sorrow, which is not capable of suffering. There is not an instant of his life when he can believe himself safe, and the grave is always before him.
What, then, is man? Nothing before he came into existence, nothing in revolt by sin, dust when his life ends, misery as long as it lasts. That is the condition of humanity caused by sin. It is this human condition, so infirm, so fallen, which became the condition of the Son of God, clothed in our flesh.
Fr Thomas A Judge

This is so powerful b/c it illustrates so vividly what we are without redemption. And everyday I witness people who have responded to redemption and have climbed out of their grave.

Jesus Christ

All I want is to know Jesus Christ, and the power of His rising, all I want is to know my Lord and in Him to abide....those words of Paul must echo in every human heart if we are ever to know happiness but also to ever know our destiny. Nothing in this whole world or my life makes sense or is worth fighting for if not to belong to Him and to love Him. He is everything. He who poured himself out....we Christians hear it so much without really understanding it.

About eight years ago I had a bad fall from a horse that rendered me unconscious. Yet I led my horse across a large field to a neighboring house. As soon as I knocked on the door my eyesight came back and the real world appeared before me like magic. It is difficult to describe. That incident changed my life in many significant ways. But it was only last week that I realized that the accident was an exact mirror of my Christian life.

Here I am dancing with my immortal soul, doing what I know is right, doing what I have learned, doing what I have seen, but in a large part doing it blindly. I am groping through life and leading others with me. And I had a large fall. Without even realized the import of it I did offend God in a major way - I was truly blind.

Yet as I knocked on the door Jesus opened it and the real world appeared before my eyes. I saw in that moment that even someone like me who follows the Lord and loves Him can fall so deeply and inexorably. I realized that I absolutely cannot gut through my Christian life with what I know and study and plow through diligently. God is pleased with those efforts, don't get me wrong. But it is much harder that way.

At the same time as the utter realization of my helplessness and worthlessness of my efforts, I was completely filled with the mercy of the Lord and knew His love and forbearance.

I had heard from many sources that when I receive the Eucharist that Jesus actually takes us into himself. That was a new thought for me after all these years. I always looked at it the other way around. I was eating, taking in the Lord's body. I realized that I was seriously turned around and in many ways had no idea how to start going in the right direction.

It like teaching a horse to use his hind end to move forward. Horses are naturally front end beasts but when you put a rider on them they must reverse that instinct and learn to move forward from the back. You can do this artificially with draw reins and larges bits but even though you get the collection it is a painful life for the horse. You can get it but they eventually go mentally ill or get just plain angry. Or you can slowly patiently teach the horse to round his back, carry you and move from behind. It takes practice, patience and above all respect for the horse and what he is trying to learn.

In many ways, when I was in control of my Catholic life I was very good at using draw reins, bits, spurs and whips (metaphorically) to get the "Christlike" result I thought God wanted. But once I realized I had no clue to what Jesus is really about and got on my knees and asked Him to teach me about Himself, I was just as blind as wehn I fell off that horse.