Cutting to the Quick

Hmmm...maybe I should make this Novena perpetual? 

When I first returned to the Lord years ago I made sure I did everything right. I was on a mission to become a saint. On the fast track to success (cough, cough, groan, groan). Mass, the sacraments, many prayers - I took great care to do it all and to do it all well. But it was fear-driven and very performance related. I mean, it bordered on compulsive. I felt like I had to make up for the sins of my past and unfortunately chose quantity over quality, thinking that more was better. After all, we are raised in a culture that focuses on this kind of productivity and I had learned my lesson well. 

Nearly drove the Lord nuts with my verbosity. Drove everyone else nuts too, I'm sure.

Did I ever tell you about my attempts at completing that series of prayers in The Pieta by St.  Bridget? You know, the ones that take a year to complete? Well, God and I wrestled together over these particular prayers for a long time.

 He had determined that I should not complete them. 

I, on the other hand, had determined that I should.

Guess who won? 

Think about it. Page one of the Heavenly Herald almost read:                          

 God Loses Patience and Hurls Lightning Bolt at Woman with Spiritual ADHD. Claims "it was the only way to shut her up!" Woman Survives to Tell the Story. 

Mary N., a woman from Fatted Calf Creek, Wyoming, claims God hurled a lightning bolt at her while she sat in the park reading  aloud from a prayer book called "The Pieta". The woman said she was on her 59th day of a year long novena and thinking about making it a perpetual one when lightning shot down from a cloudless sky and set her book on fire. Mrs. N. was taken to Mt Sinai Hospital for observation but was released after doctors determined that the woman was unharmed except for her bruised pride.  

Thus began the first cutting. I have been under the Divine knife ever since. It was (and is) so constant that I began to feel a bit embarrassed by the depths of my "fallenness".

I mean, it was so bad that I started getting witnesses in the spirit every time I read the line "Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, I am He Whom thou seekest!" (A line from one of my favorite poems by Francis Thompson.)

I couldn't even read poetry in peace.

And it was the "fondest, blindest, weakest" part that that would shoot that bolt of Divine electricity through me.

Blindest? Weakest? 

Ouch. 

It is so hard for us to see ourselves this way. As blind and weak. There I was thinking I had reached the heights of sanctity after six months of prayer and...

"And whatchoo mean you have to perform more surgery, Lord? I haven't even recovered from the last bout!"

Every area of my life was being inspected by the Divine Eye. Or so it seemed.

"Look, Lord! Over there! See that guy eating an entire bag of Cheetos? You better get right on it!"

And much was found lacking.

"Boy, we don't get a lick of privacy down here, do we Lord?"

(Honestly, I don't speak to the Lord this way, folks. Seriously. Thoughts like these just tend to pop into my head unannounced when I get caught with my hand in the ole cookie jar. Which was constantly back then despite my attempts at mastering pharisaism single-handedly. Or perhaps because of it. But, not to worry, the Lord had a quick cure for that. Painful but quick.)

(That would be: quick in God's eyes. Long and painful in my own.) 

It's so important for God to cut that false piety from us.  A piety that keeps us depending (and focusing) on ourselves instead of the Lord. Sometimes we must see the depths of our weakness before we are able to relinquish control of our lives to the Lord. I see now that my fierce determination to finish those Pieta prayers stemmed from a belief that I could save myself.  We must understand that we need salvation and that salvation comes from outside of ourselves. 

Sometimes the only way this can be made clear to us is by showing us the truth about ourselves. 

Because only by seeing this can we stop relying on ourselves. It's a harsh and painful lesson at times.

(Let's make that "brutal", shall we?)

We cannot receive God's strength if we don't give up our own. When we understand that what we cling to is a phantom strength we can let go more quickly.

God isn't interested in a mere pseudo-transformation. It's not enough for the outside to look good. No, the Holy Spirit cuts deep into our spirits in a surgery so profound that the mere mortal mind cannot grasp its depth. This divine surgery is an amazing miracle of grace and love, imperative to our existence and without which life would cease to exist. Of such gravity is the depths of our fallen nature that only God can infuse life where sin has sown the seed of death. One of the most pitiable, yet endearing quality about the human condition is our naivete when it comes to sin. We truly do not understand how evil it is. We may have an inkling but we don't fully understand it, do we?

Think about the mercy of this.

The pure, unadulterated mercy of it:

"Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."