111623

[prismaticbleed]

 

Back pain/ knot still won't resolve. Offering it up for Viral. 

Food drive, left at house, got to briefly talk to Mike!

20 HOUR FAST AGAIN, GOD BLESS

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KVOTD = 1 Peter 2:5
SURPRISINGLY heavy hitting reflection.
"Scripture says we are "living stones": the people who follow God are like a Temple, like a building where God lives. People sometimes think that to connect with God you have to go to a physical building, like a church or temple. But Jesus showed us that we don't need to go to a special building to connect with God-- we can connect with God right where we are-- anytime, anywhere. If we're the house for worship, then that means God lives IN US. Being a living stone means God's Spirit IS with us. We were made to represent Him no matter where we are or what we are doing, and no matter where our adventure leads, God is right there by our side." 
This is a Protestant reflection so it doesn't factor in the Eucharist, which changes everything. Nevertheless, there are good points here. However I'm going to reflect on them WITH the full verse AND the Eucharist in mind.
The verse:
"Come to the Lord, the living stone rejected by people as worthless but chosen by God as valuable. Come as living stones, and let yourselves be used in building the spiritual temple, where you will serve as holy priests to offer spiritual and acceptable sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ."

1) We are BEING BUILT, active present tense, and we must be WILLING! We aren't inanimate objects, after all, we're living souls. And so our CHOICE, our free will to accept OR refuse, is still REQUIRED! Even if refusal has dire & deathly consequences, God will not force us to accept. We must COME TO CHRIST.
2) As "stones", we cannot "build ourselves into" anything. We need to be USED-- we must be acted upon by an intelligent power, One with vision & ability & strength. THAT'S GOD. Without His creative & clear Purpose, we're just rocks! It is ONLY BY GRACE that we have become "alive" at all!
3) We are each only ONE STONE. To be a Temple at all, we MUST be united TO OTHER STONES. Even if we do worship "by ourselves" sometimes, we CANNOT disconnect or dissociate ourselves from the COMMUNITY OF FAITH-- and I mean that concretely! Baptism fuses us with Christ's Mystical Body through the Holy Spirit and we cannot undo it... at least, not without kicking the Spirit out of our souls. Yes, many baptized Christians may indeed leave the faith & become self-professed "heretics," but it is only if they do this with full knowledge that they are rejecting the Truth of God that they do horrific violence to the Mystical Body by tearing themselves out of it-- only then do they knock their stone out of the wall. But if they do not have such a luciferean apostasy, they still have hope. Until the day they die, they have a chance to return. God's mercy can graft them back in with joy. But after death... they cannot return to the Temple they abandoned.
4) Every building has a cornerstone, the first one laid on which ALL construction depends. That Stone IS CHRIST. Don't ever undervalue this fact. It means that EVERYTHING we do AS this "building" MUST BE BASED ON CHRIST.
5) Our purpose in this building is SPIRITUAL. We have become CONSECRATED, in a very real sense. We are no longer "earthly rocks," as it were. We are now transformed BY our very usage, transcending all we could ever have been alone. We are being "lifted up from the dirt" forever, made into something truly noble & lasting & beautiful.
6) Like Christ, once we become part of His holy efforts here, we WILL be rejected by earthly minds, by people with stony hearts, by those who worship the dirt. We can never go back-- at least, not without dying to the spirit. We can only live as one kind of stone.
7) The most amazing bit about this is what breaks the metaphor. We are humans, living beings, that as a Church collective-- as the Mystical Body of Christ-- constitute a "Temple". We are one unit, all together, each an essential part, and in this unitive state we are a "fixed location" where God is worshipped. We are all individually tabernacles, all tents in the wilderness, but together we are the SPIRITUAL TEMPLE. We are a HOUSE for God, IN & THROUGH THE SPIRIT, Who enables & enacts this very unity BY UNITING US TO CHRIST. We cannot "unite" as flawed & fallen mortal beings; the very concept is divine, a literal characteristic of God.
8) This unity is EUCHARISTIC!!!
9) Remember yesterday-- there is ONLY ONE ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE and it IS THE EUCHARIST. It is Christ's total offering of Himself in the Paschal Mystery.
10) We are MADE PRIESTS, by becoming the spiritual Temple. This is amazing because of what it implies: a Temple is made for worship. A Temple therefore requires a Priest. We are made a Temple as living stones THROUGH JESUS, the Cornerstone AND HIGH PRIEST. We Christians are united AS a Temple THROUGH THE SPIRIT, which ALSO unites us TO CHRIST. We are baptized into His DEATH, which is THE Sacrifice that Christ offers. As we are His Temple, He MUST offer that exact Sacrifice WITHIN US!!! And since we are anointed in our baptism, we share in His Priesthood, and can therefore JOIN IN THAT SACRIFICE AS PERSONS. We are made a Temple FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE. God still demands worship on earth, even with the physical Temple destroyed, even with the Temple of Jesus's Body in Heaven. We Christians are now both physical Temples AND one spiritual Temple, both because of Christ's Spirit within us, and so it is our divinely decreed duty to worship God with and within our bodies & souls, in the only way that IS acceptable to God-- through the Cross, the Self-Sacrifice of Christ, the Eucharistic Sacrament, which we offer with Him and He offers through us. We take up our crosses and we join our daily deaths to His; we offer our lives up in every instance for His glory, in spiritual union with the Mass. We physically attend & mystically participate in the Liturgy and Christ physically gives His Body to us, His Mystical Body. Thus Christ lives in us in every way and we bring Him to others as He brings us into Himself; we are Temples and Priests and Victims with Him, for Him, united in grace & love.
That's a lot of words. But it's not rambling. It's an outpouring. Words fail to express the full beauty & truth but words cannot help but try anyway for sheer reverence's sake. 

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Universalis=
"[Jesus said,] ‘The coming of the kingdom of God does not admit of observation and there will be no one to say, “Look here! Look there!” For, you must know, the kingdom of God is among you... But first [the Son of Man] must suffer grievously and be rejected by this generation.’" ..."These verses are linguistically strange, with many linguistic features which occur nowhere else in the Gospels. The chief problem is the meaning of ‘within you’; does it mean... ‘a spiritual reality in human hearts which needs only to be appreciated’? [But] the idea of the Kingdom of God as a 'purely spiritual' reality occurs nowhere (else) in the New Testament. What would we then make of the power of the keys entrusted to both Peter and the community as a whole, or the twelve seated on thrones to judge the twelve tribes of Israel?... The final sentence of this reading forms a firm blockage: before the ultimate coming of the Kingdom, the Passion of the Son of man must occur."
Dude this actually ties into the KVOTD message??
1) The PASSION is necessary for the KINGDOM to come on earth, but it will come!
2) It will come "among you"-- among those who will become "living stones," a Temple IN their community state?
3) Jesus will be rejected, in order to become "the Cornerstone" of prophecy, necessary FOR that "spiritual Temple" of the Kingdom to exist whatsoever
4) This Temple HAS THE KEYS, because the first "stone" was PETER, BY NAME. The next stones WERE THE APOSTLES, who have their "thrones" in the Heavenly Jerusalem, where there IS no Temple because the Lamb is THERE. This "Kingdom among us" is the bridge?? When Christ returns in glory, to fully unite heaven & earth, He will not erase this created planet but perfect it, and He is working in the meantime to realize that destiny through His Church. The Spiritual is wedded to the Physical in & through Christ!
5) ALL OF THIS IS ONLY POSSIBLE BECAUSE OF CHRIST'S PASSION, THROUGH WHICH HE RECONCILED ALL THINGS TO GOD IN HIMSELF.

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Oh wow, today's Flame of Love actually elaborates on this=

"The Pharisees want to know when the Kingdom would come. The question is futile because the Kingdom is already present as the Spirit dwells in the believer. A final and total coming of the Kingdom is still ahead."
"The Pharisees approach Jesus with curious minds, not sincere hearts. They want to know about His future coming when Jesus is already in their midst."
The Spirit was apparently really in believers even before Pentecost or even the Resurrection. Remember that. We cannot have faith in Christ without the Spirit, because of John 6:44. BUT John 7:39 still tells us that the Spirit had not come in fullness? Their faith was not mature or complete, and couldn't be until the Passion. They didn't have the full revelation of Christ as Savior yet. But they didn't lack the Spirit, inasmuch as He was able to influence them by grace alone at the time? I'm honestly guessing, I apologize. But the point js that Christ had come and people had real faith in Him, however nascent & wobbly, because the Father had indeed called them and therefore the Kingdom of God had indeed arrived, quietly yet powerfully, subtly yet irreversibly.
In any case, the curiosity vs sincerity is an important & scary distinction, and VERY RELEVANT to current events. With global crisis, many Christians-- myself admittedly included-- are obsessing over "the end times" and what to look for and how to prepare, etc. While there is definitely a place for this, it can blind us to what REALLY matters-- yes, even now! Of course Christ is coming back. But He is ALREADY HERE in every Tabernacle! Of course there will be a final judgment. But there is ALREADY a daily judgment for all the departed souls, and a daily tribunal of every conscience! Everything truly necessary to prepare, everything we should be focused on, is closer & more immediate than we realize. We must pray. We must do penance. We must go to Mass. We must defend the Faith. We must go to confession. We must preach the Gospel Truth in a culture of lies. And this applies ALL THE TIME. Jesus is ALREADY in our midst-- in the Church, in the poor, in our hearts. He has "already come"! Are we prepared?

"O Jesus, I will seek You in my heart. You always dwell there. You are with me. You are here. I must just be still. You dwell in my soul, and You want me to adore you there.
Today, you will come. You will be in my midst... Today, I will be awakened to Your Presence. O Jesus, on a very special day, You will come as King. I will not wait. Right now, I make You my King. Jesus, You will be my King for this day. The reign of God is already in my midst."
I seriously need to pray this daily. That is so powerful I'm speechless. Good. I talk too much anyway.
1) Jesus always dwells in my heart. Yes, I must use personal pronouns because yes, this applies to me too. I never thought it did. I always thought I was too evil, too impure, too sick in the head, too big of a disappointment, too fake of a Christian. But... I'm still baptized into Him. I still have faith, even if it's so small you need a microscope to see it. It is a miracle I am even sitting here right now, alive and typing about God. But here I am. And against ALL odds, no matter how stupid I am or how much I hate myself now that I'm a girl again, no matter how scandalous and even blasphemous it sounds... Christ is in my heart. It absolutely boggles my mind. Is that true? Lord, is it true? What does that mean for me, for my wretched soul, if it is, if You are here with me, always?
2) ...I must be silent and still. No panicked prayer rushing. No running away in fear or fatigue. I need to adore Christ in my heart. 
...and honestly, isn't that what I've been desperately begging to do for weeks? I say so many prayers but I don't talk to Him unless I'm sobbing from exhaustion and pleading for mercy so I can just sit down for a few minutes.
3) I am a living stone. Christ dwells within me. I am a real part of His Temple. The Holy Spirit is with me. My very existence is a place of worship. How do I process this information. I cannot deny what the Sacraments declare. But this is everything I've ever wanted. I have been given grace; Jesus is with me, I'm not abandoned or forsaken, I'm not a hopeless case, God hasn't kicked me to the curb, hasn't closed the door on me... I'm actually a part of the Church. I'm part of a family. I'm actually part of the Mystical Body of Christ. I'm actually loved. I'm not rejected, I'm not disowned, I'm not an outcast or imposter or fake. Jesus actually dwells within my heart. Right now. He's with me right now.
...It's actually terrifying, to be honest. I'm so unworthy, I'm so filthy dirty ugly sinful wrong.... and yet He was born in a cave, among smelly animals, in the cold & dusty dark. He died on a cross between criminals, covered in dirt & sweat & spit. My soul is far worse, I want to protest, it's utter disgrace, and yet I cannot possibly keep Him out. Ghastly as my condition may be, O God, if He knocks at my door, give me the grace to fling it wide and offer Him everything I have regardless. I'm a poor and worthless fool but I'd be infinitely worse without Him. If He's here, if He's actually moving in with me, I think... I think things could still be good. Even my awful hovel would be blessed by His Presence. And... I'd be changed. It's inevitable, isn't it? Why are you so scared? He's not going to kill you. He's going to destroy death. Once you let Him in He's going to change everything in ways you never imagined, and it's going to be beautiful. Yes, beautiful! He will transform everything with Himself, to be worthy of Himself,  even-- especially-- where it seems impossible. But I'm rambling.
4) He WILL come. TODAY. You don't need to binge-read Mark Mallett and panic for hours over your ignorance of prophecy and poor catechesis. Jesus is STILL coming to you, to wake you up with knocking at dawn, and you MUST let Him in all over again. Is He always knocking, on deeper & different doors? Does He daily need to move back into our hearts, when our stupid sins shove Him out (Lord forgive me)?
5) Jesus arrives at our door wearing a crown, and I daresay a wedding ring. He comes to us as King and Bridegroom. He is no casual roommate, He is no mere neighbor, He is no passing visitor. He knocks with authority and love. He owns this house. He loves this house. He wants to live here, with me, as both Ruler and Beloved, to bring His Kingdom into my very heart. And He is knocking right now. Listen!


"“Each night, My little one, ask yourself what you have done for the coming of My Kingdom. Never be content with yourself. There is no room on earth for self-satisfaction. (Jesus) (August 28, 1962)"
Oh this hits hard. Good.
Remember with the alabaster jar: love can never give "enough." It always seeks to give more, to give better. Love is never "content" with its efforts but it also never despairs, because love has no pride; it gives freely & joyfully & generously and it seeks no recognition nor reward-- nor does it seek to show off! Remember the widow's mite, and the "cup of cold water"! Love gives whatever it has, with all its heart, never holding back for fear of loss or ridicule, and that is what matters.
That is how we must work for Christ, for His Kingdom.
So what did we do today? Remember it's all by grace, so don't get puffed up or try to boast. If you seek praise then you're not serving God's Kingdom. We are unprofitable servants. But we are also children of God. Our servitude is a privilege, our labor is an honor. Our only reward is knowing we work for and by God's Will and that is enough.
Do what you can. Do everything you can. It all counts. Don't ever quit. Don't get comfortable. Don't get ambitious. Do everything out of love. The Kingdom is within you!

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