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The Human Heart
(Rites- of- Passage)
Silence allows you to embrace fully the sorrow of your heart. Silence allows you to enter fully the sorrow I am permitting in your heart. As you embrace this pain and suffering, you are embracing Me. You are embracing My pain and suffering and thus entering My Heart, for My Heart is all pain and love. This is My Mercy. To come to know the love of your Beloved is to come to experience My sorrow. This is why My Mother is the Queen of Sorrows, for it is she who lived most perfectly consumed in My Heart. My little one, this union of sorrow must move your heart to love all by suffering with silence, peace, and abandonment
The Love Crucified Community. The Simple Path to Union with God (p. 273). Kindle Edition.
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Human life is both a gift, filled with love and beauty, but also with suffering and difficult rites of passage. Most of these experiences are bittersweet, while others are very painful and challenging. I don’t know anyone who does not have them. Sometimes we may not recognize them as rites of passage, but they are, because how we react to them can lead to greater freedom or deeper slavery to our fears.
About a month before graduation from high school, I was trying to get to sleep, but that night my hidden anxiety about graduation came to full consciousness. For me, it was life-shaking because I had never really paid attention to it. I was both happy and deeply terrified about my unknown future because, at that time, in 1967, you either went to college. or you were drafted. Well, I certainly was not college material, and since I believed I had a monastic vocation, I just needed to grow up a bit, so the Navy was what I picked. For me, it was a good choice. I guess I was forced to choose, and I am glad for that. Looking back, it was not that big of a deal, but at the time, it was. It was also a rite of passage for my parents, who had their own way of dealing with another son going off into the world.
This inner split was important, painful, but also exciting. In my monastic life, these so-called rites of passage continue. Some seemed small but were important; others seemed large, but they were a tempest in a teapot. Yet each had to be dealt with. I still have many to go through, even if I only recognize them in hindsight. These events highlight the importance of choice and not just being pulled by rapids without thought.
In seeking to live out a prayer life, I find that it is not as easy as many think. Like any other worthwhile endeavor, there will be many hurdles to overcome. So yes, suffering is involved and cannot be escaped.
Prayer draws us deeper in, and what the Lord brings to our minds and hearts can be heartbreaking but must be faced. There is forgiveness that can be given, but the pain of the wounds remains, as well as the dark thoughts that accompany it. So, prayer allows us to stand back and observe in the Lord’s presence. If not, we can drown in the inner whirlwind that our inner wounds can cause, leading to forms of self-medication that are harmful to both body and soul.
The hardest rite of passage for many is to learn to love ourselves, which is why the Lord commands us to do so. Also, understanding that we have many hidden character flaws, but in prayer, we get a small glimpse of them. Until the time comes when we can face them with the Lord and work through them. This takes time for us to learn and allows us to grow in compassion for others. Lord, protect us from perfect people!
Prayer for a Christian is not a luxury but a necessity, for without it we are adrift. So, pray at all times of life, especially when we enter a painful rite of passage. The Lord walks with us, feels what we feel, but He can seem cruel at times. We are being pruned and must learn patient endurance. I still have a way to go with that. The Lord will never let go of us; it is we who ‘freely’ let go of Him. Trust is a choice, no matter how dark it is to trust. It is not based on emotion but a deep faith that is tested and grows in strength by each rite of passage.
There is always hope, always a path to be chosen, and as we mature and our faith deepens, these choices can be more difficult. Our choices lead to either healing or deeper enslavement to our past and the ways we self-medicate.MD
