From a friend in the U.S.:

DT: 9 October ‘2…early Wednesday morning

RE: …for however our God wants to use these thoughts in your own life

Hello…

Up here in my home office, just as dawn is breaking, I’ve re-read these words that have take me into the presence of our Lord. Your name has come to mind.

Read reflectively…ponder slowly and deeply…be blessed. These words and thoughts are from a reading during my early morning time of eavesdropping on the Trinity on Wednesday…October 9, 2002. I wanted to share with you what is stirring my heart at this hour, as I am quiet before our Triune God…Who cares about us all…no matter what. I hope and pray His Holy Spirit will be allowed to stir your own heart, as well.

Father Robert Barron describes this One who is our healer in this way…

He is the Son of God and the Son of Man.

He is the running water for which we yearn.

He is the servant, the Lamb, the suffering Messiah, salve for our wounds.

He is the helpless child under the night sky.

He is the Pantocrator, the ruler of the cosmos.

He is the prophet, the poet, the proclaimer of God ¹s Kingdom.

He is the agitator, the troublemaker, the one who annoys everybody.

He is food for a world that is starving.

He is light for a world that has wandered from the straight path.

He is the shepherd who feeds and leads and searches out.

He is the vine on whom we are grafted.

He is scourge of the demons and the harrower of Hell.

He is the pathway that leads up to the stars.

Like the finest wine, He is intoxication.

Like the best bread, He fills us up.

Through the locked doors of our despair, He passes effortlessly.

Across the roiled seas of our fear He walks.

He is the transfiguration of our frail humanity.

He is the manifestation of God ¹s frail divinity.

He is the heartbroken God who heals the heartbreak of humankind.

Jesus of Nazareth is the coming-together for which we have longed since Eden, the embrace of God ¹s relentless love and our hope against hope.

…by Robert Barron

…from “And Now I See: A Theology of Transformation, p. 159 …slightly edited for easier reading, pondering and prayer …a book that the Holy Spirit has been using at deep levels to help encourage my own soul in some very weary moments. I am grateful.

In Luke 24, the risen Jesus appears to frightened and bewildered disciples in the upper room, where they were hiding behind locked doors. Father Robert Barron has described the scene eloquently:

“Despite the locked doors, Jesus stands in their midst. The frightened group, huddled defensively in locked quarters, is a symbolic evocation of all of us locked in the fortress of the [small soul]: terrified, alone, unable to move.”

“The risen Christ, however, breaks through these fortress walls effortlessly because they are, finally, an illusion. He has gone with divine love to the darkest and most frightening place and has returned in the power of the Spirit, and hence there is no more locked fortress, no more upper room, no more sanctuary of sin. He has, as Paul will say to the Ephesians, broken down the walls of hostility that kept God and humanity apart.”

“When he confronts the disciples he says, simply and directly, “Peace be with you.” This peace, this shalom is the universal well-being that had been longed for throughout the Old Testament, that had indeed been sought ever since Eden. It is the serenity that comes from participating in the very life of God, something that stubbornly eludes us as long as we live in the narrow confines of the [small soul]….”

Robert Barron goes on to observe that the disciples are terrified by the appearance of Jesus, because they think they are seeing a ghost. And it isn ¹t simply that they are afraid of ghosts. They know how things go in classic ghost stories. Ghosts come back because they want to get even with those who have abused them. They seek vengeance and retribution. And the disciples hadn ¹t done all that well by Jesus when he was arrested by the authorities.

One had betrayed him, one had denied him, and the rest had run away to save their own skins. But Jesus returns and speaks a simple word: “Peace be with you.”

He says that to people like us who have failed in all sorts of ways. We have failed to respond to his vision of humanity living in reconciliation and love.

Still, Jesus returns to us, confronting us with our frightened and destructive ways, and inviting us to a deeper life and a change of heart. And so, says Father Barron, this is the great good news of the Gospel:

“We killed God and God still loves us; we performed the most heinous, unthinkable act, and we are still offered peace; we have tried, as thoroughly as possible, to distance ourselves from God, and he returns. Once more, the risen Christ, the new Adam, undoes the damage of Eden and shakes the soul out of its sleep.”