Judith
Hearne was a woman lost in alcoholism and absolutely lonely at 40-something.
She had prayed all her life and had gotten a raw deal and she comes in the end
to a similar church demanding some answer from Jesus in the tabernacle but He
remains silent and her faith is weakening rapidly. The sacristan and later the
priest come out into the sanctuary and their attitude in front of the
tabernacle suggests to her that they don’t believe either that there’s anyone
there. We who are familiar with the sacred can become so casual that we forget
the Presence and maybe stop believing in reality, without ever thinking about
it.
Now in
this church where I sit, the sacristan comes out to prepare the altar for Mass.
She waddles around the sanctuary without seeming to have any interest in the
tabernacle. Instead she repeatedly peers down towards the shadow in which I am
sitting. Does she notice the stranger that I am? It is good to be here.
After a
while a young woman comes through the side door, walking briskly across in
front of the altar, without so much as a pause or a glance. She has NO idea
that He’s there; she takes no notice. “Does it bother you” I ask Him “that
people ignore you like this?” But He remains silent. It bothers me!
A young
father with his teenage boy and girl arrives. They’re dressed for an occasion
and in the absence of wife and mother I take it that she’s dead and that this
Mass is being offered for her - in the event it wasn’t for her. I feel a pang
of grief and might even cry. There’s an air of grief about him, while they (the
children) seem quite happy. He genuflects passing the altar. They do not. “Do
you not mind Lord?” I ask again.
Soon
they are joined by other families, similarly dressed with the same mixture of
knowledge and ignorance of the Presence. They take up two pews between them.
The
Mass is rattled through with a frightening speed. It pleases a lot of people. The only part
that’s taken slowly is the homily and that is simply a drag! At the
consecration at least I want him to please, please slow down and give us a
chance to savour. But no!
Faith
in the Real Presence of Jesus! Saint Faustina had a vision in prayer of looking
at the Blessed Sacrament and seeing the face of Jesus in all its glory and He
tells her that He is pleased with those who see Him by faith and not by vision.
“Oh, how pleasing to me is their great
faith! You see, although there appears to be no trace of life in Me, in reality
it is present in its fullness in each and every Host. But for me to be able to
act upon a soul, the soul must have faith. Oh, how pleasing to me is living
faith!” (Divine Mercy In My Soul: Diary,
N.1420).
We tend
to think of faith in terms of vision and consolation but the reality is that
faith is exercised and lives in desolation. It is a labour a lot of the time, a
labour of love.
Faustina
had her experiences of desolation. “I
feel such desolation in my soul that I do not know how to explain it even to
myself. No one understands a heart wounded by love, and when such a heart feels
itself abandoned interiorly, no one can comfort it.” (Diary N. 943).
No
comfort! At times there is no comfort, a sense that God is standing back in
silence, doing nothing. The abandonment of Jesus on the Cross is the
abandonment of us all. WHY have you forsaken me? And the Father says absolutely
nothing in that moment. Faith is moulded, carved into shape in this desolate
and dark abandonment.
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