Feeling Overwhelmed By Life? Try This.
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Do you ever have days when you feel completely overwhelmed by life? A few years ago I stood over the sink doing dishes, my house was in the middle of remodeling, there were messes everywhere I looked, and on the kitchen table was a pile of unpaid bills. I was about to burst into tears when I saw the birds in the driveway. I remembered that God cares even for these tiny creatures, so He certainly cares for us.
That day I was close to despair, but instead I invited Christ into my life. Every sleepless night, every inconsolable cry of my babies was made easier to bare if I imagined myself caring for the Christ child. Every time an unexpected bill came in the mail, I remembered the homelessness of the Holy Family. They traveled with a few belongings on the back of a donkey, while Mary was in labor, no less.
Every new piece of sheetrock and plaster that went into the walls of our tiny, old, broken house reminded me that even shelter is temporary, and that, too, shall return to dust. By the way, sheetrock dust is really hard to get rid of—with physical daily reminders like that, Jesus hardly left my mind. This attitude change helped me get through the darkest and hardest moments of my life.
Oftentimes we like to fool ourselves into thinking we're waiting on God, but how often is He waiting on us? How often has He invited us to either share in His sorrow, or rejoice with Him in His joy, and we have ignored Him?
Today on this feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi), I recommend two spiritual reading books: Calvary and the Mass by Venerable Fulton Sheen, and Beyond Pain: Job, Jesus, and Joy by Maureen Pratt. Both authors bring up the need to develop a daily personal relationship with Christ.
Pratt echoes my experience of how much lighter your burden will be by inviting Jesus into your lives. While she writes from a standpoint of enduring chronic illness, her guidance in developing a relationship with Jesus is valuable. During her talks, she asks everyone to get up and walk around. The entire audience is usually uncomfortable with walking aimlessly in general, but then she asks everyone to pretend they are walking side by side with Jesus. Immediately the entire atmosphere of the room, the facial expressions, and body posture of the audience would change for the better. Invite Jesus into your life—start with your commute to work, then expand to your meal times alone, and the time in between.
Venerable Fulton Sheen presses deeper in his book, Calvary and the Mass, when he asks, what are we bringing to the relationship? Do we expect Jesus to do all the work, while we sit back and just receive? Are we giving him our entire hearts, our clean souls, our entire lives? What parts are we holding back from Him? Are we giving Him our best? Or simply what's left over when we've tired of His other creations?
Sheen reminds us that love is reciprocal—it's not love if we're not giving in return. While God's love is constant and never-changing, ours is fickle, incomplete, and imperfect. Are we a parasite in our relationship with God? How can we call it "communion" when there's no true communion of persons during this intimate moment of the Mass? We are the ones at fault for this separation. Jesus extends the invitation to bring us back to this union. How do we respond? Passively receiving? Or passionately giving?
Sheen shares this prayer at Communion to better offer ourselves:
"I give myself to God. Here is my body. Take it. Here is my blood. Take it. Here is my soul, my will, my energy, my strength, my property, my wealth—all that I have. It is yours. Take it! Consecrate it! Offer it! Offer it with thyself to the heavenly Father in order that He, looking down, on this great sacrifice, may see only Thee, his beloved Son, in whom He is well pleased. Transmute the poor bread of my life into Thy divine life; thrill the wine of my wasted life into Thy divine Spirit; unite my broken heart with Thy heart; change my cross into a crucifix. Let not my abandonment and my sorrow and my bereavement go to waste. Gather up the fragments, and as the drop of water is absorbed by the wine at the offertory of the Mass, let my life be absorbed in Thine; let my little cross be entwined with Thy great cross so that I may purchase the joys of everlasting happiness in union with Thee. Consecrate these trials of my life which would go unrewarded unless united with Thee; transubstantiate me so that like bread which is now Thy Body, and wine which is now Thy Blood, I too maybe wholly Thine. I care not if the species remain, or that, like bread and the wine I seem to all earthly eyes the same as before. My station in life, my routine, my duties, my work, my family, all these are but the species of my life which may remain unchanged; but the substance of my life, my soul, my mind, my will, my heart—transubstantiate them, transform them wholly into Thy service, so that through me all may know how sweet is the love of Christ. Amen."
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