Easter Joy! "I Am Who Am" Ever Present To You

Easter Joy! “I Am Who Am” Ever Present to You

“God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”

-John 3:16

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.”

- Philippians 2:5-8

            The Joy of the Easter Season continues; so also the Easter meditation on the Divine Love revealed to us in Jesus – a Love made visible with fullness and power on the Cross, a Love still with us in the Spirit of the Risen Christ, and a Love that awaits us in the Heaven to come where with ecstatic Joy we will experience that Love completely in God’s presence, unveiled in all its Glory.

            It is, as St. Paul says, a Love beyond all that we can ask or imagine possible, a Love beyond what we dare to dream real. When I read those awesome words from Philippians about Jesus emptying Himself of Divinity, I am truly amazed. In fact Paul tells us of a Love that is unimaginable, unfathomable – of a Love that is Grace and Mercy beyond belief.

            What was it like to surrender all that Heaven is – for Jesus to empty Himself of all that He knew as God in order to become flesh and dwell among us? I think first of the magnificent scene from “Lord of The Rings” when Arwen unveils the magnitude of her love for Aragorn. Under the silver light of a moonlit sky in Rivendell, she surrenders her immortality as an Elf out of love for Aragorn, someone from the world of mortal men. Her words, especially against the backdrop of that beautiful scene, are beyond inspiring. They graphically capture the magnificence of the love expressed in the Browning Poem, “How Do I Love Thee”, “let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach when feeling out of sight for the ends of being and Divine Life.”

            So also is the love radiating from the words of Arwen when she gives up her immortality for Aragorn: “I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone. I choose a mortal life. It is mine to give to whom I will, like my heart.” Amazing! Yet isn’t that what Jesus says to us through His Incarnation? Precisely!

            One might say, “Well, you have to keep in mind that Jesus knew He was God. He knew that He would rise again and return with us to the Father.” However that is true, it is still the case that Jesus as fully man and fully mortal, embraced the Cross and His own death as any and all men must face it – as events that terminate one’s earthly life. Somehow in a way no less than how you or I have to face death, Jesus embraced His Passion and Death as all mortals do. He truly risked having only one lifetime with humanity rather than enduring all of eternity without us. And with His humanity He offered His Life and ended His Life for a Dream: to save us and bring us back home to the Heart of God.

            Like it must be for all Christians, it was for Jesus as well. As He faced suffering and death, He like us had to believe and hope that the Spirit of the Father would raise Him back to Life. He like us had to embrace death believing that by the Power of God with Him and in Him, he would rise again and return to the Father. He had to believe as well that Risen and Glorified he could by the Power of the Spirit draw us also to Himself - bring us also with Him into that world beyond our world, and thus achieve His Dream of having us with Him forever.

            Such was and is the awesome love of Christ for us. And no one should water it down by somehow saying that Jesus was God and thus didn’t really go through His passion and Death as we do. The believer must not say that or believe that! It undermines the magnitude of Jesus incredible Love. It minimizes the  magnificence of the world seeing in the flesh a Love like only God can love.

            Does the “agony in the Garden” of Gethsemane not teach us anything? “And His sweat became as drops of blood falling to the ground…” Jesus, the “Word made flesh”, fully embraced mortality by becoming one of us. He faced the crucifixion and death to come exactly as all mortals do. Credit to Jesus then the same courage of love that we credit to the saints empowered by the Spirit and operating under the impulse of Grace. Jesus in His humanity was strengthened by the Father in the same way as we are strengthened by Him. “As the living Father has sent me, and as I live because of Him, so he who eats me shall live because of me.” (Jn. 6:57)

            Yes, Jesus has the Power to lay down His life, and the Power to take it up again, but this Power He received from His Father. (Jn. 10:17-18) And in a way that is exactly as all mortals must experience, Jesus had to believe that Power at work in Him would raise Him on the third day.

            How if Jesus was fully man could it not be for Him as it needs to be for us? Consider how it is for us and all humanity. In a way that is nothing less than real and transforming that same Spirit and Power is at work in us that was at work in Jesus. Under the impulse of that Spirit, the person of Faith is exalted to the heights of courage for truth, justice, and love. A Spirit and Love like only God can love takes hold of the human heart open to God. And like St. Paul we have to believe that same Spirit of the Father now at work in us can raise us from the dead even as it did Christ. “If the Spirit of Him Who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He Who raised Jesus from the dead will give Life to your mortal bodies also through His Spirit which dwells in you.” (Rom. 8:11)  

            Yet is it so difficult to believe that Jesus in His humanity had to undergo the same experience of Faith as Paul, Mary, the saints, and us? Let Jesus be fully human! Jesus in the fullness of His humanity also had to believe! He had to believe that the Life, Spirit and Power that He had drawn forth from the Father would raise Him as well.

            Failing to see this we detract so much from the courage of Christ’s Love, from a Love so much more than we can ask or imagine possible, from a Love like only God can love. Let the full stature and measure of His heroic Love touch us and reduce us to tears of Joy even as the heroic love of any man of courage.

            I am reminded of a story of such heroic love that occurred only a few years ago. During the full fury of Hurricane Sandy a policeman rescued a person from the surf on the coast of New Jersey. The person was being carried out to sea by the waves of a rip tide driven to rage by hundred mile an hour winds. The police officer went into the surf to save the person and he did.

            I’ll never forget the film of the news interview with the officer after the rescue. As he spoke he was literally trembling, as if shaken by a fear – an “agony” if you will – that shot right through him. He spoke of how he really thought he was going to die as he went into the raging surf. In fact, he was incredulous that he was still alive. As a Christian the policeman could believe in his resurrection to life upon death, but his only certitude of that reality was the certitude of Faith.

            Yet for Jesus also in the fullness of his humanity there was only the certitude of Faith. On Calvary Jesus went into the raging surf to save us, and in doing so fully embraced the reality of death, the end and termination of his earthly life. He embraced his “choice” at the moment of the Incarnation: “I would rather share one lifetime with my children, than face all the ages of eternity without them.” It was the Power of the Father that gave Jesus the fulfillment of His Dream: to raise Him and us from the dead, and to have us with Him in His Father’s house forever.                    

AN EASTER PRAYER FOR YOU

That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in Love, may have power to comprehend with all the Saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth of that Love, power to know the Love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fullness of God…

That you may know that Love which no eye has seen, nor ear heard, that it has never even entered into the heart of a human being to conceive as possible… This God will reveal to you through His Spirit…

- Thoughts based on St. Paul, Eph. 3:17-19, and 1Cor. 2:

Easter Joy! The Love That Is Still With Us, The Love Which Awaits Us

“God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”

- Jn. 3:16-17

“The Lord your God is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will renew you in His Love; He will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival.”

- Zeph. 3:17-18

“Because of the death of Jesus on the Cross, all the sins of humanity since the dawn of history have become as a drop of water to be lost in the ocean of God’s mercy.”

- Thought based on the writings of Corrie Ten Boom

“An immortal soul is beyond all price. There is no trouble too great, no humiliation too deep, no suffering too severe, no love too strong, no labor too hard, no expense too large, but that it is worth it, if it is spent in the effort to win a soul for God.”

- Author Unknown

            Do we see the Love which reaches out to us from the Cross of Christ? It is there that Jesus reveals the fullness of the Father’s Love for us, a Love beyond all that we can ask or imagine. It is Divine Love that through Christ’s Spirit is present in power to us even now. It is Divine Love too which awaits us in the world beyond our world, awaits us with a fullness and fire beyond anything we can dare to dream possible. It is a Love for each of us burning in the Sacred Heart of the Father. It is a Divine Love that on our final day will greet us and embrace us when in communion with His Son we rise with Him to Glory. It is the Glory, the Grace, the Heaven of being drawn into the burning Heart of God and being immersed forever in the fire of His Love for us.  

            I watched “The Passion of The Christ” this Good Friday, and no matter how many times I see it, I am unnerved at the extent of the suffering endured by Our Lord.

            Why did He do it? The Satan figure in Mel Gibson’s film tells us that it was all for the price of atoning for humanity’s sins. To give the Devil his due, this is true. But the Evil One is ever about doing what he always does. He leaves us with half the truth or less; he leaves us with an incomplete picture, or better still, he leaves out the most important part of the picture. Yes Jesus on the Cross is atoning for sin, saving humanity, paying the price for our salvation. But what the film doesn’t accent enough is that all of this is for me, for you, for each of us.

            It is for each of us that the Lord does what He does. We are His “happy thought”. We are the Focus that drives Jesus irresistibly forward in His pursuit of the Father’s Dream for us. It is each of us that Jesus is thinking about as He takes each step along the way of the Cross, and as He climbs higher and farther toward the summit of Calvary. It is Divine Love for us, the Father’s Love for His children burning in the Heart of Jesus, which empowers the Lord to bear all things, to suffer all things, to pay any price for the fulfillment of God’s Purpose, the Mission and Dream of having humanity with Him, in His Presence and in His embrace forever.

            I love the awesome scene in “The Passion” film when Jesus truly strengthened by Mary’s presence begins to raise the Cross once more, all the while refocusing on that Mission and Dream. As He lifts the Cross Jesus says to Our Blessed Mother, “Behold, I make all things new!” It is a statement echoing Christ’s words from the Book of Revelations, words that signify the restoration of creation to the state before the Fall – before the Fall from Grace, before the brokenness, before the collapse of that state of “at-one-ment” between God and humanity, that state of Paradise, of Eden, the primordial Garden where God walked with us in friendship, intimacy, and holy communion.

            As awesome as this scene from the film was, imagine if Jesus had turned His gaze from Mary at that moment, and then looked into the camera at each of us. Then what if He had repeated the words from Revelations while adding “for you”? “Behold, I make all things new - for you!” As amazing as this scene already was (And it was!), I think it would have increased exponentially in its power with Jesus saying “for you”, all the while gazing out at us. Why else does He lift the Cross with such power and passion if not for Love of us? “And I when I am lifted up” on the Cross “will draw all humanity to myself” - will draw all humanity into my embrace, into most Holy Communion with the Sacred Heart of God.

            In the “Chicken Soup for The Soul” series there is an incredible story about a father who rescues his son from the rubble of a school building totally destroyed during an 8.1 earthquake in Armenia. Every year without fail I find myself thinking about that father as I watch “The Passion” film and contemplate the Divine Love which drives Jesus on irresistibly to endure and even embrace suffering and death for me, for us. In fact, this is His Mission: to reveal the fullness of the Father’s Love for us. Like the father in the Chicken Soup story, the Divine Love radiating from Jesus wants only to rescue us and have us once more in His embrace. For that reason alone, for this singular “WHY?”, Jesus endures the scourging, the crown of thorns, the mockery, the contempt and scorn of his accusers, the humiliation and disgrace, as well as the horror and torment of the Cross.

            Jesus is exactly like the father in the earthquake story. The father digging through the rubble wants only to have his son once more with him. He had always told his son, “I’ll always be there for you!” Did not God say the same to us on Sinai? I AM Who am ever present with you, with tender, faithful Love. On the cross Jesus pays the price to keep the Father’s promise to us, to be faithful to His covenant vow to us.

            But there is even more to the metaphorical power of the Chicken Soup story. For his son, to be there always for his son, the father begins to dig through the rubble of his son’s collapsed school, hoping against hope that he could save his child. The father thought only of his son as he dug for eight hours, twelve hours, twenty-four hours, thirty-six hours all for the purpose of rescuing his son, all for the dream if you will, of having his son once more with him, once more safe and secure in his home and in the embrace of his father’s love. The father embraces the Cross to save his son. The father endures the Passion to rescue his son.

            During thirty-six hours of digging by himself through huge rocks and boulders, the father never once stops to rest. He does not stop to eat or drink. Then in the thirty-eighth hour the father finds his son alive and rescues him along with over a dozen of his classmates who also survived. Does not Jesus do the same in his own Passion? It is for me, for us, that Jesus pays the price of the Passion. He endures all, suffers all, to rescue us from the ruin and collapse which ensues upon the Fall – from the brokenness of human life and the separation from God and His Love, which ensues upon the trauma of the Fall from Grace.

            Yes, Jesus came into the world to suffer, to die, to save sinners, to atone for sin. But we reduce Christianity to something so much less than it is when we look only at such ideas as a full representation of Christ’s work and mission. Really, when we entertain such ideas as a full understanding and comprehensive vision of Jesus’ Mission and Dream, we reduce Christianity to an incredibly incomplete picture, a warped and twisted picture of all that the Father in His Love had planned for humanity. We become in our teaching and theological courses like “a noisy gong or a clanging symbol”, and the instruction of our Catholic colleges and Christian universities “profits us nothing”. (1 Cor. 13)

            It is because we fail to contemplate with tears of Joy the Divine Love which fuels the “Why” of the Passion. “Why” did Jesus bear all things, suffer all things, endure all things, even the sting and scourge of the Roman flagellum, even the horror and humiliation of Roman crucifixion? Remember the “Why?” Focus always on the “Why?” It is you!

AN EASTER PRAYER FOR YOU

That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in Love, may have power to comprehend with all the Saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth of that Love, power to know the Love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fullness of God…

That you may know that Love which no eye has seen, nor ear heard, that it has never even entered into the heart of a human being to conceive as possible… This God will reveal to you through His Spirit…

- Thoughts based on St. Paul, Eph. 3:17-19, and 1Cor. 2:

The Problem: The Gospel That is Jesus - Why Settle for Less?

The Problem: The Gospel That Is Jesus – Why Settle for Less?

                Settling for less than a full understanding of the Faith leads to a situation – one like we have now – that is seriously problematic for the Church. Most significantly, this is because such a state of affairs mutilates Christianity.  To be more graphic, it dismembers Christ. How else are we to put it if our schools and churches give the people of God only the Head of Christ, His teaching and His wisdom, but avoid any encounter with His Sacred Heart, even shut out any experience of the awesome Love, Divine Love, which issues forth from that Heart pierced and broken for us?

            How can such a tragedy be avoided when in fact Christians today embrace an idea of Faith that expects so little in comparison to what God wants to give us in the gift of Jesus? Such a course of action cannot but create a perilous state of affairs in the Church, yet this is exactly the course pursued by so much of the Christianity witnessed in our own day and time.

            Is this an extreme conclusion on my part? Ultimately each person must decide for themselves. But if one says there is a full and vibrant understanding of Christian Faith resonant among the people of God today, indeed it is difficult to see. For myself, I do not see it. What challenging, compelling signs of vibrant Faith surround me and confront me that I need to see but in fact do not see? Where is this vibrant experience of God’s Love present in power to which true Faith leads, and to which it leads as to its central focus and goal before it does anything else?

            This is the fundamental task of true Christian Faith: to lead exactly to this experience of God present in poawer to the heart of every human being in and through the Holy Spirit of Christ’s Love. But where is it? Or rather, where is He, the Lord in the Person of His Spirit alive and present among us today? Where is this experience of His Love pervasive and resonant among the Christian “faithful” of our own day?

            Some may protest my provocative questions as an outrageous challenge to the contemporary Church. But then, for myself, for my own good, I only ask that you take me to what you see. I long to see what you see if it would truly help me to notice powerful signs of His Life among us that I have failed to observe.

            What is it then that you see? Is it the sight of seminaries and convents filled to overflowing with new vocations? Is it perhaps a growing national movement of priests praying together daily in their rectories? How about a capacity crowd every Sunday at your parish Mass; or is it perhaps a Sunday Mass filled to overflowing with youth, youth “raising the church roof” with songs and psalms of praise sung with the strength and force of conviction? Maybe there are such movements, places, parishes and spirit-filled happenings – the dreams of Jesus and Mary for the Church if you will - but I do not see many, if any.

            Rather, all too clear to ignore and misconstrue, is a very different picture confronting us, in sharp contrast to these beautiful dreams for the Church that I too long to see. Too clearly present to ignore or obscure is the sight of so many areas of contemporary Christianity – if you can call it that – pursuing a perilous course to ruin, and precisely for no other reason than this failure to communicate the full Gospel, a whole and full understanding of Christian Faith. And what understanding of Faith is that? It is Faith that leads people first and foremost to an experiential dimension of God’s transforming Love; Faith that must lead to the power of this Love, Christ’s Love, as necessary and salvific – a Divine Love that can be present and known to the heart of humanity, that can fill the human heart to overflowing. And Jesus said, “If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink. For, as Scripture says, from his heart there shall pour forth rivers of Living Water.”

            Yet the manifestations of Christian Faith surrounding us today fall so far short of any such mission. Satisfied with simply communicating Church doctrines, precepts, and faith formulations, contemporary Church leaders pretty much leave out or ignore any effort to guide the people of God to an encounter with the Risen Christ, “alive and still with us”, present in power among us through the Person of His own Love, the Holy Spirit. I can still remember the opening words of a Cardinal of the Church to the assembled Confirmandi at my son’s Confirmation: “Don’t expect anything miraculous to happen here here today.” So much for my son’s hope for his own personal Pentecost. Was the miracle of Pentecost merely for the Apostles? Or did the miracle of Pentecost - or for that matter, all miracles and powerful manifestations of the Spirit – cease with the close of the Apostolic Age? I think not!!!

            So we are left with failure of the Church today to truly evangelize, to proclaim a full Gospel message; to proclaim like Paul a Gospel that is the power of salvation to all who believe, a Gospel that will baptize us and confirm us with heavenly Fire, with the Holy Spirit coming upon us and anointing us with a sudden “sound from Heaven like the rush of a mighty wind” (Act 2:1).

Note: Interested in reading more? The "Hodge Podge" in its entirety is now available as an eBook in our website store. Peace to you, God Bless, Doug +

A RIDE ON ROLLING THUNDER

A RIDE ON ROLLING THUNDER

My reflection at Christmas: what it means for Christ to come to us, for Mary to bring Him to us, and for their Love to be present in Power to our lives…

The night was August 27^th, the night I suffered a myocardial infraction, a heart attack. It was a frightening experience, a painful experience. But it was also an incredible experience of the power of Christian Faith in the face of the imminent possibility of one’s passing from this life. 

I awoke around 2:00 AM with a pulsating pain in my upper chest. I didn’t know what it was, this pain unlike anything I had ever experienced before. On a scale of one to ten I gave it a 7.5 – that’s what I told nurses and doctors throughout that night. It was immediately a pain so acute that I awoke my son Tim and asked him to take me to the Steward Hospital in Norwood, the next town over from us.

Back in my bedroom I dressed quickly and grabbed my rosary from Medjagore. Before leaving I gazed up to the wall above my bureau and focused on my awesome picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I gave my heart to Him, as I have done every day of my life. The whole way to the hospital I kept the names of Jesus and Mary constantly upon my lips. 

Upon entering the emergency room the attendant immediately saw my duress and put me in a wheelchair. I was taken with dispatch to a room in the emergency ward. I noted right away that the bed on which I was placed had a crucifix on the wall right next to it. For the next seven hours the Cross was right above my head within the reach of my arm.

Though the pain did not abate during those hours I felt the presence of the Lord and the comfort of Mary’s embrace ever so intensely. As I gazed at the Cross and called upon the name of God, images came to me that carried Power to my soul and spirit, the Power that comes from true prayer when the ‘fiery ordeal” comes upon us.

In my meditation under duress I saw myself traveling through time and leading all over again the dozens of Antioch Weekends that I have led over the years. I saw myself once more telling the thousands of youth I have evangelized over forty years of teaching that in union with Jesus the Son you are a child in the loving arms of God your Father and Mary your Mother. I told them that this experience is real, something that your human heart has the power to actually feel and know as present to your life – an experience of being held by God made powerfully alive to our awareness through the gift of Christ’s Spirit, Christ Risen and still with us and in us. As I relived this proclamation of the Gospel, so many faces of the youth I have taught and served passed before me. I once more saw their Joy in the Lord as they heard and heeded the Word and thus were filled with His Love.

More time passed that night as tests were done and x-rays taken. In the many hours before surgery other images came to me in my prayer. In fact images bearing Grace, sacramental images, kept on coming and coming throughout that dark night. Through them all, the Lord touched me, consoled me, and strengthened me.

I remembered the ride on “Rolling Thunder” at Six Flags in New Jersey. It was the first ride on a “big” roller coaster for my seven year old daughter Bernadette – and it was a special gift that she wanted to do that ride with me. I chose the front seat for us. This was going to be a great experience!

I began to put my father’s arm around my daughter’s shoulders, but Bernadette spurned that idea and pushed my arm away. At least at first she did that. But when that coaster began to move and she now saw looming before us the long climb up the huge first hill, she grabbed my arm, put it around her, and snuggled up closely and tightly by my right side. The “Unknown” loomed before her, and the fear of the unknown was all too soon to follow. Only now, in the arms of her father, did all fear disappear.

Reliving the image of that event on my hospital bed, there was such a powerful communication of Grace. In my communion with Christ I suddenly could feel and experience as present in power the loving embrace of God my Father and Mary my Mother. Now too I was again about to move forward into a ride on “Rolling Thunder”, into the “Unknown” that lay ahead. Yet like Bernadette long ago I was safe, secure, knowing no fear in the powerful arms of my loving Father.

Seven hours of throbbing pain… Even within the first hour it was made clear to me that this was a heart attack. Was I to pass on this night from this life? Yes, the Unknown, and the fear of the unknown, stood tall and silent before me, staring me down, even advancing toward me with each hour. It was a fear and trembling that threatened to overwhelm me and consume me, but for God present in power through my communion with Christ.

More time passed, waiting for what seemed to be forever, for what I now hoped would be life-saving surgery. During this time I would look up at the Cross on the wall right beside me. It seemed that each time I did so another memory would surge into my soul. And much like a sacrament, the reliving of that God-given memory brought Grace, peace, solace and strength into my struggling soul and spirit.

So as I gazed up at the Crucified Christ, another memory surfaced from my treasury of cherished moments from the past. And like the reliving of my ride on “Rolling Thunder”, once more the Lord would use my recollection of that moment to console and empower me further in the face of my “fiery ordeal”.

The memory was of a dawn long ago, and I was walking on a wide open fairway of an abandoned golf course. It was adjacent to the grounds of Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. The early morning was beautiful, cool crisp autumn air, clouds of gorgeous colors announcing the advent of a rising sun. As I always do, I prayed as I walked, and my soul filled with joy, love, and peace before the awesome glory of God’s creation.

Suddenly from over a hill, perhaps a hundred yards ahead of me, two large dogs appeared. Immediately they focused on me, and began to race toward me, barking and growling at a lone figure standing out all too clearly in a wide open field before them.

Fear took hold of me. Panic really. It seized hold of me and held me tightly in its grip. Like the operation for which I was now waiting, a dark Unknown was overwhelming me. What could I do to escape my plight, to flee from the image of fear and terror now racing toward me?

Then it happened, something like what I believe will happen at the moment of death for every person of Faith. A most lovely woman rose up over the hilltop ahead of me. She was the owner of the dogs. When she saw what was happening, she called out to her dogs to stand down, to stop their advance. And they did! The barking and growling stopped. Now about thirty feet away from me the dogs stood their ground, totally still, but staring intently at me all the while.

The woman then called out to me and said, “Don’t worry, they’re really friendly!” Then, with what was nothing less than a total “leap of faith” on my part, I called out to the dogs to come to me, with the welcoming gesture of hands reaching forward to them.

Now with tails wagging they advanced toward me, and it was as if they were happy, dancing and skipping as they approached. When they reached me, they lowered their heads for me to pet them. Then they leaped up with paws on my chest to lick my face, neck, hair, and any other part of me they could. I felt I was in the movie “Sandlot”, watching before my very eyes the transformation of Hercules, the “Beast”, the “Gorilla Dog-ding”, into the most friendly mascot of the Sandlot gang.

Soon the beautiful woman, smiling and gracious, was at my side, petting the dogs as well with effuse affection, and the dogs shifted their paws and licks to her in response to her love. With leashes once more attached to their collars, the dogs were off again, moving forward down a beautiful open fairway under the full control of their lovely master. My fiery ordeal was over, the storm had passed, and the dark clouds of night were now alive with light, once more radiant with the magnificent colors of a dawn sky. 

Since that day long ago on the fairway, “my lady of the golf course” has always been for me an image of Mary, our Heavenly Mother. The dogs ever since that day have become an image of death, darkness, even the demonic. Yet , as Mary demonstrated so powerfully at Lourdes, with just a word or a wave of her hand, death must give way to life, darkness must recede before the Light, and all demonic cries, growls, and shrieks must cease.

So surgery was at 10:00 AM on August 28^th. In my last meditative dream before the operation it was now Mary coming over the hilltop of a wide open fairway and advancing toward me. As I fell into a medicated stupor it was she taking hold of me, telling me not to fear. As the induced sleep took hold of me I heard her words to Juan Diego at Guadalupe now addressed to me: “Why do you fear. Are you not within the folds of my cloak? Are you not in my arms?”

At those words I moved forward once more into a ride on “Rolling Thunder”. But there was no fear in the face of the fiery ordeal before me. In union with Christ her Son I moved forward in her arms without fear into the Unknown, into “the valley of the shadow of death”.

At 11:30 AM I awoke from my anesthetic stupor in a room on the third floor of the hospital in the cardiac unit. A nurse was opening the curtains of a wide and spacious window to my left. My room was so high up in the hospital that the treetops were all I could see out that window on a beautiful summer morning. No other buildings in that area beside the hospital were all that high – with one exception. There in the middle of that very wide window was a magnificent white church steeple rising high above the treetops. A large gold cross crowned its summit, and that cross was now shining in the full strength of a midday summer sun.

For the four days remaining of my hospital stay, that’s all I could see in the exact center of my window: a large shining gold cross rising above the treetops, framed against the beautiful deep blue of a summer sky.

For five hospital days then I had lived in the shadow of the Cross of Christ. I had let the Breath of God’s Life given up from the Cross fill me. I had let the Love that radiates from the pierced Heart of Christ consume me. I had let the Blood of Christ fall from the Cross and touch me, touch me and transform me.

So for five days then perhaps I began to know with Jesus and in communion with Him the Power of the Love that endured the nails which pierced Him. I began to know the Power of the Love by which Jesus raised Himself up on those nails, raised Himself up at the end of the third hour to breath forth His Spirit upon the world and so set us free; raised Himself up to shock the world really, with a loud and shattering cry, with a loud roar like that of “Rolling Thunder”, in order to make a “new earth”, to make a new and redeemed earth come alive once more with God’s Love.