The Reward I Receive Now

16 Friday May 2014

Posted by Jerry Robinson in Bible Reflections, Communion

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This morning I realized I was a full week behind with my reading from this Easter season’s Little White Book so I took some time before work to catch up. When I got to today’s reading for 16 May 2014, Friday of the Fourth Week of Easter, I couldn’t help but look upwards, smile and give thanks. Unbeknownst to me, today’s reading is based on John 6:55-56, the very passage about which I wrote and posted as The Bread of Life just last night. Believe me, folks, I had no idea I would be reading more about this today.

I think it is His way of reinforcing what He just taught me.

Because today’s entry from The Little White Book perfectly complements my reflections on receiving the Eucharist, I feel obligated to reprint the passage here.

(The following is reprinted from The Little White Book, Little Books of the Diocese of Saginaw, Inc., ®2013 Diocese of Saginaw)

“For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” (Jn 6:55-56)

This week Jesus leaves no room for hedging or metaphor. He speaks flat out, straight: “This is my flesh…This is my blood.”

He doesn’t say, “My body, my presence.” He says, “This is my flesh.” And he doesn’t just say those who “take in” his body. He says those who feed on his flesh and drink his blood.

It’s real, literal, graphic.

It seems like there are two ways of receiving Communion. One is as a child who tends to see Communion as almost a spiritual dessert.

Another way is to become part of Jesus and the way he lived. The moment of sharing Eucharist is meant to be a moment of conversion. When I receive the Lord, I’m consciously saying, “Yes, I want to live Jesus’ way. I want his way to be part of who I am.”

The Eucharist isn’t a reward I receive after I have put my life entirely in order. It is in itself a conversion experience, part of the ongoing change and reform that is involved in following the Lord.

It’s the reward I receive now.

(The post The Reward I Receive Now was first published in Reflections of a Lay Catholic)

The Bread of Life

15 Thursday May 2014

Posted by Jerry Robinson in Bible Reflections, Eucharistic Adoration, Prayer

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Eucharistic Adoration, God-moments, Gospel of John, Grace, HolySpirit, Prayer

There is truly something special about a holy hour of Adoration! There are simply too many of my prayers answered and mysteries explained to me for the Holy Spirit not to be working during that precious hour of genuflection when it’s just me and Jesus. I’ve written about many instances where I have been graced with understanding during that weekly event, and I now have one more “God moment” to add to the list.

In my last post, Never Stop Learning, I recounted how I would pray for God to fill my heart with the Holy Spirit when I started to feel a little empty and I needed to be jazzed up. Then, through a serendipitous reading of Romans 5:5 during my holy hour of Adoration, I came to understand that the gift of God’s love had already been poured into my heart through the Holy Spirit at my baptism and that His love for me is constant and never-ending.

Also, through that discovery, I began to make sense of why I sometimes feel exhilarated in my spiritual life and why sometimes I feel less so. But, even though I know I can’t sustain the spiritual rush that goes along with “being in love with the ‘feeling’”, I still pondered how to find a more consistent, day-in/day-out feeling of “being in love with Jesus”. I needed to figure out how to level the bumps in the road.

So, last Friday afternoon during my holy hour, I prayed for understanding of how to maintain that closeness with Him from one day to the next. Then, as I often do to round out the hour after my prayers, I opened the bible to read. That afternoon I chose to read the daily scripture instead of randomly picking a passage from the bible. The gospel for the day was John 6 : 55-58. I read it and, just like the week before when I read Romans 5 : 5, I had to immediately re-read it because I couldn’t believe what I had just read:

“(55)For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. (56)Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. (57)Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. (58)This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”

“Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” There it was – the answer for which I had prayed just two minutes before. My mind jumped back a year to the night I became Catholic and I remembered my baptism, my first Communion and Confirmation. I remembered how the best part was feeling the presence of Christ upon receiving His precious body and blood during first Communion. And, I knew that all I needed to do to level those bumps in the road was to be renewed in Him each week through taking of the Eucharist, and to remember that He is in me and I in him – that His love is constant and never ending.

I get it. And, I won’t forget it. This week, as I’ve approached those bumps in the road, I have had to stop several times, whisper His name, and remember that He is in me. Each time I have been graced with instant peace.

My next holy hour of Adoration is tomorrow afternoon. I can’t wait to discover what new insights I will receive through listening to His comforting words. If you haven’t experienced this grace that comes from spending an hour in His presence, I encourage you to give it a try.

Lord Jesus, Your presence, through receiving Your precious body and blood in the Eucharist, nourishes and sustains me daily and brings me everlasting life. May I always allow you to satisfy my spiritual appetite. You are the Bread of Life.

Amen

(The post The Bread of Life first appeared in Reflections of a Lay Catholic)

Never Stop Learning

02 Friday May 2014

Posted by Jerry Robinson in Bible Reflections, Faith, Prayer

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HolySpirit, Prayer

I have now been Catholic for a little over 13 months and I have finally realized and accepted that I will never stop learning about my faith and discovering what it means, to me, to be a Christian. There is just so much to wrap my mind around. It seems that every time I open and read passages from the bible, read my daily devotional by St. Augustine, meet and discuss my faith with my men’s group, or other such opportunities, I have a new revelation that is either a totally “Ah-ha” moment or, at least, clarifies something about which I have been unsure.

Most of the time I feel as if I’m the last Christian in the world to “get it”, but, then, I realize there are probably others out there who are in the same boat as me. And, so, I write about it to both help me better understand and with the hope that I might reach one of those folks and bring him, or her, a little closer to Christ.

A couple weeks ago I posted in Praying for Help that a recent epiphany was finally understanding that God is always there trying to help me if I will only let Him. In the instance I mentioned, where I grew into the habit of praying for God to help make me a better person, I realized that He has given me all the knowledge, skills and tools I need to become better in all the roles of my life if only I will do His will. So, now I simply pray, “Please, Lord, give me the prudence, courage and strength to do your will.”

Besides praying for God’s help, there is one other standard fixture in my daily prayers: “Please, Lord, fill my heart with Your Holy Spirit and Your love so that, as Your disciple, I may readily give it away to others.” When I think back to times when I was particularly “in the Spirit”, such as after a Christ Renews His Parish weekend, or after an especially gratifying Adoration hour, I believed I had been graced with the Holy Spirit during that particular instance. Thus, as my spirituality waned from time to time, I prayed to be “revisited” and “renewed”.

And so it was that during a recent Adoration hour I prayed my modified prayer for the wherewithal to do His will, and I prayed my regular prayer to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Then, after praying, I opened my bible to read from a random page. This time I opened it to Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Chapter 5, and began reading. When I got to verse 5, I stopped and re-read these words again:

Romans 5:5 – “and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

This was an “Ah-ha” déjà vu moment all over again. St. Paul was telling me that, just like praying for help, I don’t need to pray to be filled with His love and Holy Spirit, I already have it in me, it was a gift I received at my baptism.

But, I admit, I’ve had to think about and digest this a bit. If this is true, if I indeed have a continuous supply of high octane Spirit in my tank, why, then, do I feel I need to be refueled from time to time?

After days of contemplation, I decided the answer to that question was that the standard to which I had been comparing the amount of energy, or Spirit, I had in my tank was flawed. It was inflated. Those times when I felt farthest from Christ were not because my tank was getting close to empty, but rather that, in those moments when I felt closest to Him, my engine was turbo-charged and running like an Indy car.

Well, as much as I like the exhilaration that goes along with moments like that, I know it is not sustainable. As much as I would like to feel that rush every day, I know I can’t handle it. My life would be a wreck. I need days when I can only run at the speed limit. I accept, too, that there will be days when things beyond my control force me to slow down, and days when my engine conks.

I’ve been kicking this idea around in my head for a couple weeks, trying to be sure I had it right. In fact, everything written up to this paragraph has been written for many days. But, actually, I felt stuck. In the back of my mind, it seemed there must be a reason why we Christians, or perhaps simply us humans, cannot sustain the continuous rush of an emotional or spiritual high, and I wasn’t sure why.

So, in the hopes of bringing closure, I brought it up two nights ago at my Men’s Bible Study meeting thinking that they might shed some light on the idea and get me beyond my impasse. And, they did, at least in a way that makes sense to me. My friend Carl told me that our mutual friend, Jim, once explained to him that folks who constantly seek that rush tend to be in love with the feeling. But, he said, we can only mature as Christians by understanding and accepting that it is Christ with whom we should fall in love instead of the experience. Only in this way can we build that personal relationship with Him.

And, believe it or not, while typing that last sentence, I had another déjà vu moment. Those words sounded familiar. I found them in my blog post Are You In the Garden or in the Desert? from back in February . With quotes from Fr. Robert Barron and Archbishop Fulton Sheen, I used that very thought to explain why we go through spiritually dry periods. I suppose at the time it didn’t occur to me it could be the anecdote for why our spiritual highs need to be limited, too.

Now, I will have to alter the second part of my standard prayer to go something like, “ Lord, please help me remember that Your love is constant, that your Spirit resides in me. Help me show my love for You by being Your disciple and spreading Your love to others.”

“Lord, help me to always seek to understand Your Word and to never stop learning how to do Your will”.

(The post Never Stop Learning first appeared in Reflections of a Lay Catholic)

Amen