19th Sunday in Ordinary
Time – “But the Lord Was Not in the Wind”
About 20 years
ago I was a brand new high school teacher and, although I knew I wanted to be a
priest, and had told everyone, I was doubting.
I remember at one point hitting my bed and saying “Jesus I NEED to know
that you are REAL!!!”
And
immediately I saw a very similar image to last Sunday’s Gospel. I was standing on the top of a mountain
looking at Jesus far off in the distance of that same mountain top talking to
two people who I could not see. Then
Jesus came closer to me, and there was a light that came from Jesus and passed
right through my heart and I was immediately struck with complete and utter
bliss. After the vision ended, I was
walking around my house singing Catholic hymns, and I certainly surprised my
family, as that was NOT my normal behavior!
But then that
night, as I laid down to sleep, I could feel the super-intense joy start to
go. The effects, though, continued to
linger for about a week, and then they were gone.
I spent the
next couple of years trying to recreate that spiritual experience, I would
pound my bed with my fists and say the same words I had said before, but
nothing ever happened.
And that
caused me to go into a sort of spiritual depression for a couple of years.
So pretty
early on at St. Meinrad, I bought a book written by St. John of the Cross, and
he definitely helped me understand why trying to recreate a spiritual “high”
(or to seek a spiritual “high” in the first place) can actually be damaging to
our spiritual growth.
He said
there are a couple of reasons we should not seek out spiritual highs:
1) St. John
of the Cross says one of the reasons we should not ask for spiritual highs is
that when they inevitably fade, we will try to recreate them. Guilty!
2) Another
reason he says we should not pray for spiritual mountain experiences is that that
the Devil can also lead us astray by appearing to provide us with some of the
stuff that we THINK constitutes a “spiritual high”.
3) Also,
early on at Meinrad, I was going to Mass every day, and I remember walking into
my spiritual director’s office and I started crying and I told him, through the
tears, that “I am going to Mass every day, and I just don’t FEEL anything happening!” But a few months later, when I began reading
St. John of the Cross, he hit me right between the eyes with this quote: “In
receiving the Eucharist, they spend all their time trying to get some feeling
and satisfaction rather than humbling praising and reverencing God dwelling
within them. And they go about this in
such a way that, if they do not procure any sensible feeling and satisfaction,
they think they have accomplished nothing.”
A lot of us,
in the Catholic Church and also non-Catholic Christians spend a lot of time and
energy trying to make Mass (or their Protestant prayer service) an EMOTIONAL
experience, but that is not what the Mass is meant to be. 99.999% of the time I do not FEEL anything at
Mass other than just a quiet peace.
This all gets
back to our first reading at Mass, one of my favorite in Old Testament. Elijah is also in desperate straits as I
was. He told God I need to know that you
are real, and then there is this litany fire, earthquakes rushing wind, but it
says God is not in any of those things, but was in the still small whisper.
This Mass,
and every Mass, brings a peace that is DEEPER than pyrotechnics and praise
music…
At this
Mass, and every Mass, as Saint Peter told Jesus on the top of Mount Tabor, it
is good for us to be HERE at this Mass to experience the still, quiet presence
of Jesus.
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