“Remain in my Love”. As a Catholic, the experience of His Love, Mercy and Grace is so deeply, tangibly sacramental. How do we hold this space in a time that has ruptured the only ways we have ever known? As part of this faith community, I can’t help but reflect on what we’ve lost and what’s been gained. We may be sorting through this for a while. Not long, I pray.
In the earliest moments of the church closures and quarantine, I remember wondering if I would fully understand what would be lost in not being able to receive the Eucharist. In those early days, I most acutely felt the loss of our Lord as I drove by the locked doors of my parish church, with the altar and tabernacle no longer in view. In my heart, I knew it was not just an empty building, but one filled with His Presence. Moving closer to Holy Week, I felt an invitation to respond to Jesus’ call to remain with Him, in the only way I knew how. To pray that much harder. Each day. I was participating in on-line Mass, yet it was here that I felt the loss of His Presence most deeply. No longer able to receive Him tangibly in the hand or on my tongue.
Throughout my lifetime it has been in the entering of a church and sitting in front of the tabernacle where I’ve gone to pray the prayers that mattered most. Confident in the comfort of His very real Presence. How strange to live in a time when we’re asked to move away.
I am drawn to the Mystery of a belief in the Presence of Christ so strong that someone would run into a burning building or in the midst of war to save the consecrated hosts in a tabernacle. Each story reflecting what we believe. That this is true and beyond important to us. This is our Lord. Even as the world shifts drastically around us candles continue to flicker inside churches next to each tabernacle throughout the world proclaiming the Presence of our Triumphant Lord.
There have been some beautiful stories during the quarantine of outwardly making His Presence known. A bishop standing at the top of a mountain range in the wind holding a monstrance with the Blessed Sacrament to bless the people in the valleys below. The priest who stood on the back of a pickup truck driven through his parish neighborhood holding the monstrance on Easter Sunday as people gathered on driveways. The priest who placed the Blessed Sacrament in the window of the church so people could come and pray. My own parish is holding “Holy Hours” of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and reciting the Rosary every Wednesday night in front of the church, and we are welcome to attend while seated in our cars and listening through our smart phones in the parking lot. I’ll say it again; we’re living in a strange (but telling) time.
The most important thing to remember in all of this is to remain in Jesus’ Love. “If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.” (John 15: 9-10) “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. (John 15:12)
With all the uncertainty and challenges that lie ahead, may we never lose sight of the tangible, physical, real Presence of Christ, that visibly proclaims –
God is with us!
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