The mirror

I see her every day at Mass, frumpish, about 60, shaved head with a little longer bit at the top, like a man’s. She wears thick glasses and a long handle purse across her chest. I don’t know her name.

I also don’t remember when she began to notice me and smile. I can’t imagine why, among all parishioners why she would more and more glance at me.

She says all the responses of the Mass, a bit loud, with a pronounced baby talk speech. That was my clue that she is mentally handicapped.

What also is my attraction to her is a barn door openness about her, clearly not ashamed to say loudly her baby talk responses. My beguilement by her was a 1000 times magnified when she, noting that I, again, was looking at her, pointed with her index finger, palm totally extended, EVER so delicately at her blouse about her belly, with a tiny smiley, eyes closed, she cocked her head a tiny, tiny bit, she raised her eye brows slightly, oozing with pride at her apparently brand new blouse, which was probably a $1.95 from the 70% off at Wal-mart clothing rack.                   

This description is just so short of the charm she bubbles, her  pride so tiny but effusively expressed, so incredibly cute, cute!!

That happened months ago, and today I am still as overwhelmed at the cuteness of her pride. I have come to clearly understand what is so incredibly charming about this woman; it’s her powerful childlike persona.

Since then, she has shown me her new winter coat, her new football winter hat, and once she even pointed at her new snicker shoes. Always tiny movements, adequately discreet.

Today, on my way to my customary front pew, passing her, I noticed she had an eye patch and her glasses were off. I also noticed that today she was so much older than before. I motioned to her eye patch and asked softly what happened? She straightened up to reach me and said who knows what in my ear. I could not understand what she said, but she looked somber.

So I asked if it hurt, she came close to my ear again to say something but she began to cry. She did not cry like a woman, she cried like a baby, her face contorted like a baby’s face would….            .

My eyes welled up instantly with hers, I too, was overcome with her sorrow,  she hid her baby face in my neck and cried. Oh Lord!! What intense sorrow she felt!!! And shared with me!!

I asked to scoot over and sat with her, her head nestled in my neck, pouring out tears, like a baby does. Even now, my eyes well up at the thought.   

I don’t know why she cried, I could not understand what she said. I don’t know even if she could see without her glasses. I knew she was very, very nearsighted. She stayed on my shoulder only for a minute or so, then; she straightened up and faced forward waiting for Mass to begin. She crossed her leg showing me her socks, they had something printed all over and she did not know what they were. Then I could tell what it was, but I could only think of the name is Spanish….. taras…… Oh yeah!!! Dragon flies, so I told her they were dragon flies.

 She was now fine.

And I am more beguiled than ever at her perfect image of who enters heaven;

“And He said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Mt 18:3

She is joyful always, she´s attentive, she´s outgoing, so totally selfless, she is appreciatively proud of what she has, which really is thrift store quality, helpful to all who need it, but so much more, she´s beguiling beautiful. When she passes me on her way to Communion, with her customary tiny moves she “directs” me so I know what to do and how to go to Communion. She directs me with indescribable tenderness, a little hovered over, to be clear in her directions.

Always after Mass, she is quick to help father carry the Lectionary and the Mass Book for him, as he carries the chalice, paten, etc to the sacristy, she follows frumpishly, bubbling a most satisfying joy, not only enviable but contagious.

I so love her, not only love her  but I so would like to be like her. While during Mass she speaks her baby talk responses so shamelessly and participatorily, I only mouth the words.

Oh yes, that convicts me every day. But today God allowed me to share her childlike sorrow and her tears, who knows for what, I did not understand her, but we shared it. And I just love her all the more. My tears flowed freely and shamelessly. I too, today, cried with her like a little girl, and I don´t know why.                 

 

Today, as I stayed to pray after Mass, prayer went out the window, all I could think of was my charming friend. And then, it occurred to me that she does not share with ANYONE ELSE those tiny moves showing her new something…. She does not show her new sox to anyone else; to no one else does she beams proud of what she wears. It occurred to me … Oh goodness!!! I wonder…. Does she see me like I see her?? Is her attraction to me like mine to her?? Do I look mentally handicapped to her? Do I look like I need to be guided and slowly explained things…. does she want to be like me like I want to be like her????

I know a man with a hard heart.

                     For my entire life I have been praying for him.

The first time I prayed for him I could not speak words yet. But my cries reached heaven knowing, I know now, those tears were not for me but for him.

                      By the time I met God and could understand that He could change things I was 5, so I looked straight to heaven and I asked, I asked.

                      I looked straight up and my sentiments without words floated up like a white baby dove with a message tied to its leg. A message that only God understands.

                     By the time words began to ride on those sentiments, the words were not always nice words. Some time those words were written on rocks thrown up to heaven. But the message has always been the same.

                       He is so terribly lonely, so abandoned. All his friends have left him and not a single relative calls him. He seeks out strangers to make small talk with but they move away. He is so desperately lonely, desperately longing for conversation, desperately for someone to love him and understand him, though he would never say that. He so desperately seeks to break away from that loneliness and finds no relief.

                     He’s a man that has truly known what it is to be admired; his artistry is of extraordinary quality. But he glided thru those experiences with superiority and prowess as the only members of his team.

                     And now I look at him, as his memory fails, his hard heart, like a black hole growing more intense as his mind shrinks, but like my friend says: “The heart does not get dementia,” his heart is harder than ever. As he remembers less and less, his memories are all muddled supporting what his heart has always had – hardness, resentments, ugliness, vengeance, punishment, punishment, punishment…..

                      My prayer to God is deeper, heavier, more conscious and deliberate than ever. I now lay it every day, every daily Mass, every consecration, every night prayer, at Blessed Mother’s feet. The true implication of his hard heart is keenly understood. He has lived in hell for so long and he now does not remember what it was like to not live in hell. And while living in hell, he remembers more and more that he was an altar boy and thought of becoming a priest. He remembers that his mom used to put a rosary in his pocket and made him carry it, thus surviving being run over by a car 3 times and the tire tracks always over the pocket with the rosary.

                     That man with the hard heart and the primal nonverbal message that floated up to God so many years ago, linger in the air no longer toward God but towards him, with the same empty cup feeling that has been my companion all my life, but now no longer hoping or longing for that empty cup feeling to disappear. I now know it will never be filled.

                      I no longer need to know that God will answer me. I no longer have to know if God hears me, a life time of asking has taught me that God does answer, and He does hear me.

                     I know, I know more than anything else I know, that the hard heart man will not end up in hell, for no other reason than I have asked. My life is a continuous prayer for his salvation. It did not begin asking for his salvation. I could not possibly have known that for many years but God has given the words to my prayer and the words are:

                                      Thank you for having saved my father.

 

 

I’ll Try to Say: “Crucify Him” ! next time.

It occurred to me, as I was praying the Divine Mercy Chaplet, that we ought to meditate on His Most Sorrowful Passion, but…why do we?

I was deeply asking Jesus to have mercy on us as I imagined how it felt to have the crown of thorns slide down His Most Precious skull. It did not make sense to me to ask Him for mercy as He suffered so unimaginably. Did He not have enough to think about during His agony than to listen to our pleas for mercy?

How mysterious a prayer across time and across events. He listens to us during His Passion, we console Him during His Passion, we cause Him more pain during His passion, He extends His Passion beyond any human capacity of endurance, we understand He does, but don’t understand how He does, much less why He does.

We have an intricate and direct understanding, all Christians do, that He suffered for us. Even for any one of us, in fact for just one of us if that was the case. There is clear revelation that His Passion is directly intertwined with our sins. That each moment of His Passion was for each of our sins. His humiliating nakedness for our shameless nakedness, the insults He received, the insults we inflict. All those He cured and taught left Him as we abandon our old relatives, poor relatives, poor friends, all those who die of loneliness.

During Holy Week, during the gospels readings where we are the crowd who shouts: “Crucify Him!! Crucify Him!!” for years I could not say those words and I watched how the congregation would, they would just say it as it was written, like they did not realize what it means!! They were demanding His Crucifixion.

How can I demand His crucifixion?

From afar, I admire, almost, our separated brethren. They celebrate the resurrected Jesus, only the resurrected Jesus. He died for our sins and He is now alive and that’s that. They don’t get caught up by His Passion at all except in thanksgiving for going thru it, but thank God, it’s done and over with!!!!

I shared an examination of conscience with a neo-pagan-Christian friend of mine that examines the Catholic faith with great interest. We have long conversations about it. When he read a 10 page examination he finally understood the Catholic responsibility to seek the state of grace and constantly been conscious of our wrongs as to readily repent and confess them. He’s happy that he just could say he is sorry every so often looking toward heaven, even from his bed. He finds that sufficient and I wonder if for him it is. I feel deep in my heart it’s not enough for me. I understand how Jesus took upon Himself my shameless nakedness, to show me how He cleanses me when He takes it to the Cross to die with Him. I accept His offer on the cross to take my sin upon Himself, to die with it that I may not keep it if I don’t want it.

I accept His prayer that He wants me in His Sacred Heart so He can take me to His Father’s Heart and remain with Him there if I want to. I understand that He wants us to acknowledge each moment of His suffering so we KNOW how sin looks, how deforming, defacing, how altering, how far from what He aimed for us to be. “….a worm… not a man…”

He then shows us His glorified body, illustrating what we could have instead of earthly pleasures and sloth. Blessed John Paul II said so often: “Become what you are”

I understand that to mean that I am the cause of His Passion and Death, that I am the cause of His coming to earth, I am the one He asks the Father to forgive ‘cause I just don’t know what I do’, I am the one He wants in His Sacred Heart so as to ascend to heaven with me in tow, to put me also, with Himself in the Father’s Heart to live there to enter into the Father’s Rest for ever.

I’ll try to say with the congregation: “Crucify Him!” because that is where it all starts.

I wanted revenge and He wanted my praise

                     

                 One day I was talking with God.

                  I unloaded my heart of so much injustice I saw. With anguish and anger that I could hardly bear, as I described this instance that triggered my crisis, a person I knew had the audacity to abuse my generosity and insult me ​​so casually. I spoke passionately secretly wishing some revenge that God Himself might inflict to avenge me.
With passion and boldness I spoke when suddenly my mind stop dead.  blank, nada, empty, nothing.

                  Gradually a feeling, more than words, a recognition of a scene that could barely be deciphered.  Then, I understood an invitation was before me. I felt such faint words, words without speech or sound. But more accurately, I understood  like a horn in my ear.

                 “Look….,” I was invited, “Look how beautiful are these flowers”   There in front of me was a garden, incredibly diverse and vigorous.  God and I were now sitting on a wall at the edge of this beautiful garden whose perfume filled the air.       

See? See how these flowers emanate such                             pleasant scent.

                           Watch as they sway with the breeze”

                That is exactly what I saw, flowers of all kinds, of all colors, all sizes  gently rocking as the breeze blew even those so high up in the air.

                Captivated by that vision, like honey made of air, I understood that this garden exuded solidarity, companionship, brotherhood, a joy that was part of the color, shape, each petal, so pervasive was the joy they all were.

                 “Look,” God told me again, “Look how all the flowers …….”    I understood, I understood just exactly what He said, what He told me speechlessly.. that all the flowers were for Him, with him, and he knew each so intimately, even those hidden close to the ground,  believing that He did not see them, and those, so small believing that God could not see them, those who would eem             neglected or ugly, and those great, prominent, brilliant, that could be seen from everywhere, all, absolutely all know Him and His infinite tenderness protects them and feeds them, whether  they did not realize it so.

                 God showed me His beautiful garden, where each of its flowers do not complain of other flowers,  nor envy, don’t bother each other, nor hate each other or thought to be unsuitable. None spoke ill of another …. Including those growing in the shadows, believing that God did not see them.

                                                                                         
God did not say anything more. He had nothing more to say. I understood so clearly that He sees all the flowers, He cares for all the flowers, and all the flowers are from His garden where all love Him. I understood it as such beautiful lesson. Our love is for Him, our vision, and attention and understanding is to praise Him

                       His is justice and mercy, to Him belongs to dispense them as He sees fair

                                                                                             

not even Solomon was dressed as magnificantly as these flowers of God

 

Wisdom and Old Age.

Fear of God is the beginning of Wisdom

                   When Moses did not know what to do any more about the disputes, arguments and disagreements among the 400,000 men plus women he was leading across the 40 yr journey, totally exhausted and at wit’s end he went to God to complain, that’s a very Jewish thing, complain, that is what Fiddle on the Roof said, and they are our older brothers and they taught us well.

The dispute issue is so second nature to us, no. I find it most revealing what God did to settle things.

He asked Moses to gather the ELDERS, and delegate to them the dispute resolving tasks, reserving for Moses the most difficult ones. This so very revealing of God and His creation, how He reserved for the elders the wisdom to pry apart the human condition.

So if they have been gifted naturally to clarity to see the human entanglement in the midst of arguments… I wonder why is that they are exclusively the ones to be afflicted with dementia, Alzheimer, those impairments that not only obscure the clarity in wisdom but takes away the ability to remain clear, cognitive and engaged with reality. I wonder what God thinks of this.

A very good friend of mine, while caring for her Alzheimer afflicted husband, discovered the most amazing thing that had not been discovered before about the disease. The person regresses his life, identically stepping on the very steps he stepped on the way forward. Most interesting!!

Years ago, while visiting nursing homes with the missionaries of charity, I must confess that was the absolute most difficult ministry for me EVER, more that prisons, catechism, marriage counseling, there is nothing I have done that is more difficult to take than nursing homes. I see to perfection what Blessed Mother Teresa meant when she said that the greatest poverty is loneliness. How true. Those poor old committed for the rest of the lives people were abandoned for the most part by their closest family members. There were people there that had not had visitors for years and years; some, never.

Yet….. they looked expectantly at the door whenever someone went by. I could not bear it then and I can’t bear it now. It all comes rushing back as my father faces the very same dead-end end.

My mom died at 57 of a heart attack during her sleep, escaping the very same end her 2 sisters met, one died of Alzheimer and the other of dementia. Her brother died of a heart attack at 57.

My father’s 3 sisters died of Alzheimer, and his one brother was the only one that was cabal to the end. He is the one that fought hardest with God all his life. Consumed with rage against Him, he would tell anyone who would listen, most specially priests that Jesus was Prometheus, of the Greek Mythology and he came back to earth to beg for forgiveness for having brought the fire of the gods down to us. Yes, my friends, Jesus came to ask for forgiveness, ironically, he of that entire generation has been the only one who died in his own bed, surrounded by his own family, him and them praying the rosary. Who would have thought it….. Not in my wildest dreams.

                                                             Mercy, unadulterared MERCY.

                    My father now is well on his way to dementia, brutally fighting everyone around that wants to help, the traffic, the doctors, the cleaning woman, the guy who cuts his lawn, who ever at McDonald’s that brushes against him slightly, but since he has no one to talk to anymore, he calls me. The one he wants to call least.

And as irrational he has always been, I find interesting that he can be even more irrational still. So, I wonder if there is a consequential connection in the life of the person that ends up disconnected from reality yet spending the rest of his days in an inescapable regressing journey. And what of that wisdom specifically reserved by God to be bestowed upon the elders as to help society pry apart the thick confusion mankind lives in today .

Are there elders worthy of such grace left today??

For those who met Father John Hardon, he oooozzed wisdom. Anyone standing near him would slosh around the oozings from Father’s spilling wisdom. I was with him during 3 retreats among the many he gave. I did not recognize the incredible grace I received by having been taught by one of the greatest minds of the 20^th century.

I wish I could ask him now.

                   God chose the elder to be the ones to help us think thru the muddled messes we get into, yet, a massive amount of our elders are been stricken with dementia, another bunch are discarded as human garbage. I wonder how many are left as patriarchal or matriarchal pillars upon which families build their futures upon, like God said to Moses. Choose from among the elder…. There are not enough. And those in the US supreme court …..scare me. That’s no wisdom. No God given wisdom.

this is how I remember him

The tantrumy tot and Divine Mercy

            Some years ago, I heard a talk by an amateur kindergarten theologian. I found that talk the most interesting way to explain how it is that Divine Mercy works on us.

Let’s call him John, and he was intent on having a large family. But I met him and his family on baby #3. He has 8 now. And he described how happy they all were most of the time with 3 kids in 4 yrs., meaning mom had one more in the oven.

He was used to coming home to noisy, happy milieu of games on the floor, mom with someone in her arms, cooing and musings, and tiny hootings.

One day, he tells, he entered his house and all the glee is was used to had turned into a pandemonium of cries, screams, disarray of …. everything!! Without having closed the door yet, he glanced at his usually calm, collected, smiley wife with a tot in her arms equally calm, collected and smiley. She looked desperate, tired, and quietly in anguish for her husband’s help.

There, somewhere among the toys, blankets, spills, vomit, cups, spoons, all over the floor was child #2, a 2 yr old, screaming, crying, thrashing and kicking on the floor.

Dad closed the door, dropping all he had in his arms on the floor and went immediately toward the tiny mayhem who upon seeing dad come towards him began to scream all the louder and began to crawl away. Dad tried over and over to pick him up…. The tot would wildly scream, arch his back, refusing to let dad touch him. Never mind that the diarrhea was burning his little butt and legs something awful, that the fever made him feel absolutely miserable, that he had thrown up all over himself and his little upper lip was bright red from the nose drips but he would not let dad come near.

Dad sat on the floor, near, just waiting for the tot to allow him to come near, softly inviting him to daddy’s arms. He chose to allow his little son to decide when he would accept daddy’s love. He would not allow mom near all day. This baby was in such a mess, feeling so sick and yet did not want to be touched by anyone.

As daddy sat on the floor, he would speak softly of how much he wanted to relieve his little tot of the terrible discomfort he was in, he thought how much his tiny mayhem needed to be cleaned and loved; he pondered why his little baby was so adamant….

He said that it was 45 minutes, 45 minutes whimpering in such awful discomfort as long as daddy did not move, not away, not closer. The baby laid on the floor for 45 minutes and dad asked again and to come to daddy, to let daddy love him.

Finally!! the little boy slowly walked to daddy and melted in dad’s arms this time crying of exhaustion, of pain, and relief. He laid his head on dad’s shoulder and  dad got up and began to take his clothes off, and put him in a shallow tub of water, his little boy still unresponsive but allowing daddy to bathe him, but more than anything, to love him.

That night, as dad and mom laid in bed, he replayed that most unusual scene that his ordinarily loving, playful and charming little boy had shown him just how it is that we, God’s little tots act when we are deepest in sin, in anguish entangled in briers and thistle, overwhelmed by personal sin that eclipses the Face of God.

Daddy never saw the diarrhea or the vomit. Nor heard the screams and kicking, he saw a hurting little boy who needed love more than anything.

He realized that we act just like his little boy; we reject the One who can clean us off, heal our sickness, make us well and bring us into His rest.  Abba’s Perfect Love is just too much to take when we are ugliness and repugnance.

Divine Mercy does not look at our leprosy, our stink, our rejection but the hurting little tot inside.

Yolanda Bello

I don’t know what to pray for

        

           Last Sunday I was coming home at about 4pm. The temperature was about 100 F degrees. I was coming down the alley behind my  house when I noticed that there was a police car parked there, behind my house.

                    As I got there I squeezed passed him to get into my parking when I saw the policeman and a group of people in a tight gathering in my neighbor’s  yard  across the alley from me. I came out to the alley curious, of course, to see what was happening when one lady came out to the alley to tell me that she had called the police because she had found a kitten with the head stuck inside a Campbell soup can and as she tried to pry it off the kitten, he was scratching her terribly, so she called the police.

                   Apparently, that had been going on for a bit of time and no one could budge the can off, so the policeman called the humane society to come and do something. Shortly after, not even 10 minutes, there came a woman from the humane society, in her humane society uniform, well, animal control uniform, and she went into the yard with a cage in hand.

                  As that person was trying to do something with the kitten, my neighbor came out to the alley again where I was to tell me a bit more about it…. She said that the neck of the kitten was full of maggots.

                   ……..I felt like I could not get my breath. I felt I could not breathe at the thought of the helplessness and horrific anguish of that kitten; he had to be in that demise for some time to have maggots all around the neck. She left again and I stood there trying to catch my breath. I opened my eyes in an attempt to get that image out of my head and something else caught my eye.

                   As I looked to my left I could see Planned Parenthood across the street from my house where about 100 girls per week come and pay $1000 + to get the RU486 pill to abort their baby. I was then overcome by a bigger and more awful awareness. Where I stood, to my right was the poor kitten surrounded by a group of concerned, empathetic people and a woman who obviously heard it’s cry and she answered, and her intervention  mobilized the police force who in turn mobilized the Humane Society, Animal Control Dept. on a Sunday afternoon at 4pm, in a 100 F degree weather. But to my right, 100 babies per week are killed in the most barbaric of ways and there is no one on this planet that can be called to intervene for those babies, not even their own father.

                      And when I looked straight ahead, caddy corner from my house, is our Crisis Pregnancy Center, where we have a Chapel, and in the Chapel is a tabernacle with Jesus hidden inside.

                      I was overwhelmed by the incongruency and irony.  I could hardly wrap my mind around it. It occurred to me to pray.

                     I meant to pray, but I was mute. Totally mum. I did not know what to pray for. I only could think of a rapid escalating set of motives that end with the protection of the most inhuman act in the history of mankind and the protection of a kitten fighting to live while no one was trying to kill it, but instead they are trying to save it. What do I pray for?

                  So it occurred to me to ask you all. Those kind souls that follow this blog.

                  At the end I wondered if I should pray that Romney would win the election, except he believes that it’s ok to kill a baby when the father is a rapist and the mother then becomes a murderer. That baby is sentenced to death, and I ask….”what did the baby do to deserve death?” the father will unlikely spend time in jail if at all, and mom becomes a murderer and that is celebrated and protected by the law…. the baby is the last to arrive at the scene; the crime was already committed, why then is the baby the one to have to die?

                      Then I thought, should I pray for the conversion of Obama? After all, cheaters and liars live without consequences when money is involved. Like Hugo Chavez, no one can find anyone who voted for him yet he wins by a land slide each time. Is there hope then to pray for their conversion?

                      But Jesus lives, I wondered if I should pray that Jesus would come back before the elections and save us all.               

    Tenderness beyond understanding,

    Mother of us captives

    And giver of the Living Waters.

    By this prayer bind us to Thee

   Who contains the uncontainable

   The Most Holy Trinity,

    That we may offer these pleas

   For Thy intentions since

   Thou know ours.

Ladder thru which we only ascend to holiness,                            

                                                                  Grant us the grace to be like Thee in all things.

                                                                  To God be all the Praise and Glory.

                       What do you all pray for?