It is human to ask God "Why?". However, I have learned over these last
years not to ask God "Why?" Instead, I submit to Him, through the
Immaculate Heart of His Mother, my entire family. I consecrate and
dedicate each one of us to His Sacred Heart through the Immaculate Heart
each day. I pray for strength, wisdom, prudence, and patience. In short,
I seek to been filled with the Holy Spirit to light my path so that, in
turn, I may be a small light to my son. Each night before he goes to bed,
both my husband and I bless our children. We have done this for over eight
years now.
We surround them with God's Holy Light. We envelop them in the Most
Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. We entrust them into the maternal
care of the Blessed Mother, and surround them with legions of angels to
keep watch over them. We invoke the guardian angels and ask that the
angels pray with us and for us that we may persevere until the end.
Is it easy?
No, of course not. There are nights when the struggle of the day, its ups
and downs, weigh heavily upon the heart. There are nights when the
exhaustion of the struggle takes upper hand and causes me to sigh a prayer
of sincerity to God. Just a sigh, nothing more. There are then no words,
no strength left to utter a single formal prayer.
And in that wordless prayer, in that blessing of the children, in the
acceptance of this cross, there is a melody that comes from Heaven and
returns to Heaven and gives praise to God.
Do I hear the melody? No. I do not "hear" the heavenly chords but I
believe they are there. I believe that the entire suffering forms a
rhapsody that is unequaled by any composer that has ever lived, or will
live. I believe that the melody is written in God's language of love, and
it surpasses all understanding and all imagination.
You see, I have often pondered on the words of Genesis which states: "In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God." I have asked for
discernment and understanding through the Holy Spirit, and the knowledge
placed upon my heart is that the Word is sound, and sound is power and
energy, and the energy is that of Love. Love, in harmony with God's
Perfect Will then becomes a symphony that is ceaseless, that fills Heaven
and comes down to earth through the graces and mercy of God.
I have pondered that, were we to truly meditate upon and contemplate God,
we would quickly become so interiorly still that we would hear with the
ears of our soul this symphony that has been from all time, that grows in
crescendo, mounting until the Father shall cry out, "Time is no more."
I have often felt that within each one of us God's Love pulsates through
His presence, through His life-giving grace, and that were we to "hear"
this melody, we would die of ecstasy.
These are thoughts that I have come to believe after much prayer, after
many tears. Did not our Blessed Mother also weep? Did not our Blessed
Mother have anxious moments as she raised the Christ Child, sent Him out
upon His public ministry, and then watched that ministry culminate in the
fulfillment of the Father's Will as her son died hideously on Calvary?
Her soul was pierced through and through with swords. This was the
prophecy of Simeon when she presented herself and her son in the temple
after Christ's birth. The swords, which pierced her Immaculate Heart far
exceed the swords, which pierce our own hearts, but in this is solace. If
we turn to her, then she, as our mother, can comfort and obtain for us
those special graces that a mother needs to keep watch with her child as
that child suffers.
Does not Our Lord know the pain of His own mother's Immaculate Heart? In
the fullness of Scripture, her Heart beat as one with His Most Sacred
Heart, which bore all the pain of all the world for all time, and died of
Love for us.
If this Love, which transcends all we can imagine, is the symphony of
God's Love, then we, too, are privileged to share in the melody. We form
part of the chords, and we are each a musical note that gives praise to God
as we strive from moment to moment to live in Union with His Will, in union
with His Most Sacred Passion.
Before I end this fourth installment on Symphony of Suffering, I wish to
add that I am also sure that the sufferings of my own family, of my son, of
myself, are minute compared to the sufferings of others in the world. I
cannot know the sufferings of each person. I am not supposed to know this.
I am to understand that everyone suffers, and that suffering is beautiful
when given back to and united to the Passion of Jesus Christ. I am not to
compare my sufferings or those of my family with anyone else's. Rather, I
am to understand that God seeks our cooperation in redemptive suffering,
and begs us to surrender to Him, to unite all sufferings, as well as joys,
to Him, and in that way, the melody is strengthened. With obedience, with
acceptance, and all because of faith, we intertwine the melodies of the
suffering souls throughout the world, and bring the symphony of Suffering
to a fullness that nears completion in the Father's time.
So, as I must now go and attend to my family duties and the work of the
day, may we join together in giving to God everything that will befall us
this day, and seeing in each thing the hand of God's providence for our
eternal salvation. Let us pray for the strength to suffer with Him and for
Him, and to suffer also for all those who reject suffering, who renounce
it, and who demean it.
Oh, how can we demean suffering when it is the suffering of Jesus that
sets the example for the entire world?
Until next time, let us lift up our voices in heart-felt prayer that sings
to God the praise which is His, and join in that celestial chorus wherein
the melody is constant, and the chords of music flow from the souls of all
mankind into a perfection before God's throne which we shall hear when we
return to Him in our Heavenly home.