Faith, Hope, and Love are all we need, the greatest being Love…. Yet wars continue, strife continues, poverty continues, to mar the world with sorrow. Many people struggle to find meaning and purpose in this broken life, like me many seek it through their faith. Many, like me, will experience an event or a series of events that take them away from the institutional church they belong to when the answers seem to be lost there, answers they feel inside their hearts but not inside the walls of a church they once called home.
As a child living in a very broken family I always prayed, can’t think of a time I didn’t pray. It did not make the horrors of beatings and abuse rapidly go away, but it certainly changed me, and eventually those horrors did go away. The prayer strengthened me for the often difficult journey of life, and although my life may have been unusually traumatizing, I know that no life is easy, and all need strength to get through. We need the invisible to see us through the hardships we see.
Something happened when I was just 6 that changed my life forever, I went to my grandmother’s funeral. I remember vividly sitting next to my aunties as they prayed, everyone prayed in unity, aloud. We were Catholic, and the sisters all knew all the prayers and for me it was magic, prayer was something we all did, WE….it was hopeful! A sharing of the Spirit, a sharing of love, a showing of faith within the promise of hope.
To me this is when we are at our best, people, families, the church, all together in prayer and the sacred mystery of what unites us. Yet, often in our churches we get tied to earthly concerns, about the numbers and how to bring in people, instead of how to continue to invite God, Christ and Spirit…. It is as if the most important guests at the table become minor players, not just in church, but in the whole of life. For our stories are never about “the church” but they are about living through life’s journey, a life we have been gifted with that is all too brief here, and all to mysterious to ponder when contemplating eternity. We have been gifted with something too big for us to hold alone, we need, NEED that which is greater than ourselves, God.
At this time I return to theological studies, as I re-enter the Catholic Church of my family, although different because it is here in Italy. My studies are inviting me to keep going to the mystery, the miracle and the hope of the resurrection, a faith bound in a love beyond the logical and reasonable world. It is a welcome place for my soul at this time, it is a returning home.
How does the Mystery Call You?
Where does the Mystery take you?
Is God a Mystery beyond all knowing for you, and if so how is that comforting?
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