The Kid Sister of Blessed Imelda

The children and I attended the 7 pm Mass for Ash Wednesday as I was scheduled to serve as Eucharistic Minister.  (Husband stayed home as he isn’t well.) After I received my ashes I returned to my seat in time to see my youngest, Sunshine (dd 8 yrs) turn and apply ashes to her sister Cricket (dd 9 yrs). As I meditated on the Lenten journey we are beginning, the knowledge suddenly broke over me that the journey ended with Easter and the penitential mood of my heart exploded suddenly into a sunny joy. 

I can just hear you now… duh?!?!?! (of course Lent ends in Easter)

So why did this knowledge break with a special joy over and beyond the usual appreciation of Easter?  This Easter I will be spending far from home as my best friend and I go to see a mutual dear friend and her family received into the Church.  The thought of these precious ones and others who will also be reconciling to the Church this Easter brings such a deep joy… It is the nature of this Treasure that one doesn’t feel the urge to hoard.  There is enough for all to feast at the Table for the rest of our lives and never see the grain of the wood.  The nature of this Treasure is quite the different sort to the greedy, selfish competitive pushing and shoving inspired by any earthly wealth. The nature of this Treasure rejoices in sharing, rejoices in the discovery by another of the same Pearl of Great Price. 

So as I enter the desert of Lent, striving to imitate my Lord… It is with a new understanding of how He must have entered the desert as well… for as surely as I look forward to the joy of the Easter Resurrection and new unity with Him, so must He have done…  What a thought!  What a LOVE! What a JOY! It is this that we are invited to join and in this is embedded the understanding that suffering is JOY because of what it brings!  When suffering is become joy, it has no more sting, it has no more power… because it is suffused and consumed with something greater… and we are set free by joining Him there.

Recently someone posted in a homeschool forum I frequent about her recent discoveries in spiritual study.  Evidently Catholicism makes more sense than it ever has before and God has lifted the veil for her, much as He did for me over a year ago.  I say lifted the veil, that is true, but it was also… as she said… much like being hit by a baseball bat.  Such a radical move from previously passionately held beliefs to a place one never expected to go… it does contain an element of violence and certainly the reaction of shock.  Even the questioning, is this REALLY happening? And so forth.  Her posts have given me such intense joy as I can’t describe… to see God working in her life as He worked in mine, to see someone else saying, “I can’t believe what I’m saying but…” just like I did.  I hope to correspond with her more, to hear what God is doing in her life and hear what she is learning.  Isn’t it amazing how God gives us a heart for others? Especially when He is working mightily in their lives… it is such joy to see response to Him in an earnest seeker! So wonderful to see His mercies newly evident, regardless of who’s life it is in.  I also long for her to experience the same richness of faith and joy I have found.  Holding her close in my heart I pray for her, that she would find and act on God’s perfect will in her life and be blessed above and beyond all she could ask or imagine.

As for me, I find my own joy renewed in her experiences and find new energy for the small portion of the road yet before me as I long so desperately to come to the Table in the Eucharist.  How my heart longs for completion of this long journey, and the beginning of the next as I begin to walk and serve the Lord as a Catholic as He has purposed and desired me to do.

Hearing myself say it still brings a bit of an incredulous smile to my face…