Wherein the old preacher preaches to himself
[How grateful I am for my family and friends who through their prayers and sacrifices lower me through the roof into the Presence of Jesus.]
For me this Sunday is not very different from those before Hurricane Ike in Galveston. The sun pours down bright and hot. The wind blows and stops and blows again. And I arise and seek to worship the Lord knowing that today I cannot make my way to Mass. No, the body barely consents to sitting in a chair in our Library and watching (and praying) the Holy Mass from Irondale, Alabama broadcast on EWTN. Without EWTN I would feel so cut off from the Church and the world in some ways.
But it is also true that last evening when I could watch no spiritually uplifting programme on television, when I could not hold up a book in my hands for spiritual reading, I prayed with all my heart to the Lord and had a sense of all heaven present with me in my little room as I prayed both the Rosary and from the heart. I knew I was not alone.
Sometimes when you are closest to your goal -- whatever it might be -- you feel yourself a thousand million miles away from achieving it. But I tell myself, 'Don't you stop, Vince. You keep going until God Himself tells you to stop!'
And it is this truth I declare from the pulpit of this blog this bright Sunday morning in East Texas: You are never alone when you pray. You are never alone when you talk to the Blessed Trinity, the saints and the angels. All heaven is open to you and is with you no matter what you see in the physical world about you. So now is not the time to give up! Now is not the time to give up on God, on His Church, on your friends or yourself... Now is the time to raise up your hands to Jesus and offer Him everything, absolutely everything in what your life has been, in what your life is, and what your holiest desires intend it to become.
So don't you stop dreaming your heart's most holy desire. Keep on advancing toward the goal you and God both know is before you, and do not stop till God says 'Stop.' Actually God will say something far more wonderful to you: Well done, my good and faithful servant. Enter into the rest and the joy of the Lord.
You and I will hear these words some day, God willing and the creek don't rise (I told you I'm living in East Texas now, didn't I?) We ... We will hear these words spoken by the beautiful mouth of the Holy Face of Christ who longs to kiss us and welcome us home to Heaven far more than we can desire to be with him.
Now to the King of the Ages, immortal, invisible, the only God
be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
1 Timothy 1: 17
+Laus Deo!
