Monday Musings - A Prisoner You Need Not Fear

[The following is excerpted from my book, Fleeting Glimpses of the Silly, Sentimental and Sublime.]

When we read or hear the Scriptural reminder of the eternal consequences for our failing to visit the imprisoned (Matthew 25: 31-46) more often than not the image that first comes to mind is of those locked behind bars in the far too numerous Federal and State prisons and local jails that saturate the landscape of this nation – some 2,266,800 adults in 2010 according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. More than 2 million! Many of them are Catholic and none of them are there voluntarily!

Admittedly, Jesus is not calling every Catholic to be His representative and ambassador to our forgotten convicted brothers and sisters. Certainly though more are being invited to this needed ministry than are responding. Is God calling you? Is fear holding you back?

(Photo©Michael Seagriff)

But there is one prisoner you need not fear. One that each and everyone who professes to be Catholic, without exception, are being called to visit. He has been imprisoned and been ignored for more than two thousand years. Unlike his 2,266,800 incarcerated brothers and sisters in the U.S., He is imprisoned voluntarily and out of love. Yet, the majority of those He loves and who profess to love Him ignore Him, rarely if ever visit Him.

He is in every Catholic Church where the Blessed Sacrament is reserved - but for all practical purposes, in too many instances – He is alone and abandoned. Even the few inclined to visit Him, often find the Church doors locked. How can that be for a Church and its members who are called to make the Eucharist, the source, center and summit of their lives? How can Love Himself be in our midst and so few care to be in His Presence?

Go visit your imprisoned Lord who longs to see you, listen to you, talk to you, and make you whole. He awaits you in the locked tabernacles of His Churches or exposed in a Sacred Monstrance.

During your visits, bless His ears and warm His Sacred Heart by repeating the loving words St. Maria Faustina offered Him:

"O Jesus, Divine Prisoner of Love, when I consider Your love and how You emptied Yourself for me, my senses deaden. You hide Your inconceivable majesty and lower Yourself to miserable me. O king of Glory, though You hide Your beauty, yet the eye of my soul rends the veil. I see the angelic choirs giving You honor without cease, and all the heavenly Powers praising You without cease, and without cease they are saying: Holy, Holy, Holy...I adore You, Lord and Creator, hidden in the Most Blessed Sacrament."

Visit this Prisoner as often as you can. Love requires nothing less.