As I have acknowledged previously, Father Ignatius John Schweitzer, O.P gave birth to Godhead Here in Hiding Whom I Do Adore – Lay Dominicans Reflect on Eucharistic Adoration two year ago, when he invited the Lay Dominicans of the Province of St. Joseph to share their thoughts on the Eucharist and Eucharistic Adoration. He did this not knowing how many would respond or in what genre they would write.
“Come out of the marketplace, put down your vegetable knives, the laundry, your coming and going. Let your hands drop from the work of the world. Bring me your heart. Leave everything else.”
Imagine
Jesus entering a village, and the excited residents calling from house to
house, “He is here! Come! He has arrived!” A bucket drops back into the well,
dough is covered with a bowl for later, the loom goes quiet, a plough tilts to
one side in the furrow. Breathless villagers rush to sit at the feet of the
rabbi named Jesus. The room is warm, and the energy is electric around Him.
They listen, some with questions beating in their chests like birds in a cage.
Jesus answers their unuttered questions as He speaks. Some bring sadness like
baskets of dust, some bring the charred remains of long-held anger, some are as
full of worry as a tall jar of olives. A secretly wrapped wound, a coughing
child, a pain that is old and never relents - people bring all of these things
to Jesus. He heals, transforms, steadies, and uplifts with both His words and
His gentle, penetrating gaze, and everyone there feels this grace of His touch,
even if He does not touch them physically.
When
He was born, Jesus was brought gold, myrrh, frankincense. People were still
coming to Him with full hands, but whether it was a gift of kings, or a
tear-streaked face and an apron full of dusty figs, He accepts everything.
Jesus leans forward to stress a word, raise a palm, tilts His head back and
laughs, and the people know He is not only a teacher, but a healer, a master,
and a joyful friend. Like dawn spreading pink and gold across the sky, they
begin to realize who He is: the anointed one, long awaited, the Messiah.
When
He left the village, they cried, already missing Him, and most returned to
their work thinking about His words, but even more, remembering how He made
them feel. They would never be the same, and they knew it.
The
world is still a marketplace, a busy village, not that different from the way
it was two thousand years ago. And still, God, is calling us to put down some
of the busyness, and to sit with Him.
The voice of God is not a cinematic production, at least not for me. It doesn’t rock the sky with fireworks. Instead, it comes quietly the way snow arrives silently in the night, the beauty of its arrival lost if we are not awake to see it. In the stillness and silence, we can feel the presence of God. Our time in prayer is like taking new yarn and dipping it into a vat of dye. The yarn emerges tinted with the dye bath just as we emerge from prayer with hearts saturated with love.
But
there is another step in this metaphor because colored yarn is not too useful
left as it is. When we receive the Eucharist, we are bringing everything that
we are, what we have, into the presence of God. Like the people who once sat at
Jesus’ feet, we bring Him our fears, our worries, maybe our thanksgiving, a
heart full of joy. Or maybe we offer our hearts, like bundles of yarn, freshly
dyed, and we say, like St. Ignatius, "Take, Lord, receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding, my whole will, all that I have and all that I
possess. You gave it all to me, Lord; I give it all back to you. Do with it as
you will, according to your good pleasure. Give me your love and your grace;
for with this I have all that I need.” And God receives the humble yarn of who
we are. But the thing is, He doesn’t just take it. He changes it and creates
with it. The Master Weaver makes something new, with his own hands, from who we
thought we were, into what He calls us to be.
In
our modern world change is constant, and even feels accelerated. We may be
eager to change, but we often can fear change. We can be inspired by it or
resent it. Do you remember being a child and going through the car wash,
sitting in the backseat while the soapy rags dragged over the top and sides of
the car? Inside, the car was dry and untouched. Similarly, we can drive through
life’s car wash, everything swirling in rotary brushes and beaters, while
inside, our hearts remain the same. Wouldn’t we want God to clean our hearts,
sparkling bright and to change us? To fulfill our Christian vocation as it was
designed by God: to be conformed to the image of his Son?
As
the wool cannot resist the dye, we too are changed in the presence of Jesus on
the altar. Day after day, we sit in His presence, maybe silently, with silence
being the sacred corridor of prayer in the heart. We bring the fibers of the
day, and the skeins of our longing, and God as Weaver takes them all, and
changes them into something more beautiful, because it is in His design.
Perhaps we think of the many things in our lives that need changing, but the
main work is the transformation of the heart as it is gradually repaired,
healed, and maybe even turned from stone to flesh, all in His presence.
Isn’t
God everywhere? Can’t we meet Him while matching socks and folding laundry?
Yes, because God is in everything like the tiny drop of water in the center of
a kernel of corn that makes it pop. But some things are felt and understood
best when we stand in their presence. The world is mostly covered in ocean, and
we can spin a globe and tap our fingers across the blue paisley of the oceans.
Yet if you dive past the breakers and float on your back off the Jersey shore
and feel the salt in your eyes and how it lifts your body under the great
expanse of sky, then you will know the ocean. The idea of the ocean pales in
comparison to the experience of the ocean.
As
Catholics we exist in the realm of the miraculous. It is a miracle that Jesus
was born in a simple and humble way, yet in Him, the pulse and heartbeat of God
was manifest in the world. It is a miracle that the presence of Jesus in the
Eucharist is available to all of us in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and in
Adoration. The pangs of loss felt by those ancient villagers who loved Jesus
but had to say goodbye has been resolved by His outpouring of Himself on the
altar. We don’t have to say goodbye. We can say hello, daily, and we can both
welcome Him and be welcomed by Him. Some people live lives of work and activity
punctuated by prayer. But we are called to live lives of prayer punctuated by
work and activity. Prolonged prayer keeps us united with God. Through all our
activities, a habitual state of simple prayer and union with God varies in
intensity at different times of the day but creates a rhythm in our lives. When
we take that time in Adoration into the world, every hour carries the sacred
texture of Holy Hour.
If
we somehow received news that Jesus was in town, that He had arrived, can you
imagine the heart-bursting joy that we would feel? We would rush to wherever He
was, dropping everything, and we would crowd into whatever space held Him. We
would sit and pay attention to every word that came from His mouth, and long to
be close enough to brush up against His clothing. When we sit or kneel in
Adoration before His body in the Eucharist, we are really in His presence,
every bit as much as the villagers who abandoned everything to fly to where He
taught. And just as they came away changed after being in His presence, we,
too, cannot help but come away changed.
Put
down the kettle, the garden hose, pick up the baby, and run. He waits for you.
Come out of the marketplace, put down your vegetable knives, the laundry,
you’re coming and going. Let your hands drop from the work of the world. Bring
Me your heart. Leave everything else.
Sarah Fabry, Holy Rosary Fraternity, Summit, NJ
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