prismaticbleed | thoughts today 041816 (Reply)

today's religious thoughts:

"grant me opportunities in which to show your charity, God."

"in the name and for the sake of and through Jesus Christ our Lord"

"it is the nonchalance with which you commit the sin that is the true blasphemy, child"

remember the dream about judas and stealing the almond butter
petty earthly sins are LETHAL
don’t sacrifice your eternal soul for some stupid fleeting waste

lord, let me be a door for you to walk through and into the lives and hearts of others.

 talk about the "voices" and how I KNOW which ones speak true, but I keep struggling with this "fuzzy brain sinfulness" which TERRIFIES ME

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@00:08 AM

I know the face and feeling of my own soul. When I detach from appearance and form and just be, I feel total love for God, total willingness to do only His will, total obedience to His virtuous word.

But always, there is that vicious, wild-haired girl, snarling and hissing and spitting at me, "NO I DON'T," "I DON'T CARE," "I HATE THAT," etc.

She forces herself over me, elbows me out of my own conscious vision, and sits in my body as if she owns it, blaspheming against God and throwing our body into sin without a care

She is so hard to fight, God, she has such power it scares me.

I suppose all I can do, all I can ever do, is pray. Even if her immediate response is a loud scoff and a spit, "that's stupid," spoken with bitter acidic hatred. I cannot let the sheer agonizing pain of her intention spear me to death. I cannot. I must be strong, for the glory of God. It's not for my own sake. If I have any Good in me, it is from the Source of ALL Good, which is God the Creator, my Lord and Savior, who incarnated here on Earth as my beloved Jesus Christ.

And I want to mean that too, wholeheartedly-- "my beloved," in speaking of Christ. Once again, the girl is the biggest obstacle, but she carries with her the ultimate stumbling block: this bizarre, guilt and fear-choked belief that "love is stupidity," that "love is evil."

…This consciousness has been fighting that false belief (for I KNOW it is false even if that hasn’t sunk in yet) since we were about 13 years old.

Truthfully, any "love" that is not Christlike is not love, and therefore is foolish. However, God is Love, and THAT Love is something ineffable and virtually unspeakable in its glory and beauty, felt and understood by the heart, surpassing all selfish doubts and sin, illuminating one's entire soul.

A thought about the Eucharist.

It's GOD, it's JESUS CHRIST, coming to us in a tangible way here in this present age.

I've, weirdly, been struggling with understanding it lately? But that's key. It's not "just bread." The Host is a HOST. That little perfect circle of bread is a symbol of the Last Supper's same offering, of Christ OFFERING HIS VERY LIFE up for us, by sacrificing his body, his VERY INCARNATION, in reparation for our sins.

The Eucharist is a reminder of that; moreso, it is a constantly re-offered gift. It's Jesus Christ, coming down in flesh and blood, giving himself to us in a way that our flawed bodies can partake in, not just our souls. That's important, I think. It's TOTAL communion. Our bodies are so broken and flawed and lost and God, through The Son, STILL wants them to be His Temples, still wants them to be vessels of holiness, and the only way that can happen is for God to BE in them, which LITERALLY HAPPENS when the Eucharist is taken into our bodies.

Our souls commune with Christ on that level. Our bodies need the Eucharist.

It's a great uniter, it's a mystery that makes perfect sense, it's a priceless treasure, and the one final thing we cannot forget is that it IS CHRIST JESUS. It's not just body and blood; it's not "remnants" of His incarnation here 2000 years ago… when we say it is His body and blood, we mean that in that it IS HIM, NOW. He has no physical body now as humans do, BUT in the Holy Eucharist, He has nevertheless stepped down into our world to be with us. In the Eucharist, He gives Himself all over again, in total love, in total selfless love, this time not to be crushed in rage and hatred, but to be joyously taken with gratitude and humility and knowledge of who He IS.

…My time in "headspace" taught me just what that feels like, to love someone so ardently and selflessly that you are willing to give your very self to them AS "food"-- NOT as something "to consume," NOT as something motivated by lust or passion or any such sinful selfish things-- but as a loving source of nourishment, for lack of a better word. It's the willingness to sacrifice one's life, one's very physical life, and to allow that person to take into themselves the most intimate core of you, your heart, your blood, your life-- as that is where you feel this love, this life, and you just want them to overflow with it, with this incandescent affection, this deep compassion, this want for them to just… shine with it.

That's the only way I know how to think of the Eucharist, and when I see it that way, through actual graceful glimpsing, however brief and imperfect, into a similar thing… it brings me to my knees, weeping.

The next thing I need to prayerfully "meditate upon" is the Most Holy Rosary of Our Blessed Mother.

That, too, has been surrounded by "doubts" lately.

It's so strange. I DO love all this of my faith, deep in my heart, but it's those weird surface-level screams and callous rejections that I need to burn up with this. God grant me Your proper discernment in this, and grant me the unflinching fortitude to obey what Your Divine Grace has allowed me to understand.

I love the Rosary I flipping LOVE the Rosary. I love it as a prayer and, I will admit with some awkwardness, I love it as a concept. Does that count? It's such an elegant, lovely thing-- this chain of jewels with the crucifix gracing the end, this mysterious tangible prayer. It's beautiful.

The devil keeps trying to separate me from our Blessed Mother Mary.

I have a deep inner pull of devotion to Her as the Mother of Sorrows, and as the Undoer of Knots, and a growing affinity to her as Star of the Sea. But at the end of the day she is still Mary, still "just" Mary, the Mother of God. The Mother of God! And she was almost a child still, she accepted in total pure selfless faith, the kind of faith I know the Holy Spirit can bestow upon me because I feel it sparkling deep within me now but it's buried, in this awful cave of human frailty. But Mary was human too, and her Son chose to become human too, for our sake

I guess the point I'm trying to make with that is, I do love her, but those awful demons keep screeching in my ear and chest, "no I don't!!", every time I affirm the truth (that I do). They aren't me but they coarsely demand to speak in my stead, and I NEED TO STAND AGAINST THEM. If I don't, their screams will drown out the words of my own heart, and then I'll be terribly lost in the bramble-bushes as it were, nearing the edge of the cliff.