I know exactly what you mean but I never stopped to actually think about it. But for me a very lovely and strange thing happened. Well not strange. Wrong word. I would say rather a grace filled happening. Holy Saturday I woke up feeling light of heart. Usually that is a hard day for me because Jesus is not with us. The tabernacles are empty. But this Holy Saturday I was filled with lightness and Easter Sunday was filled with wonderful lightness and light. It has carried over. I feel as though a great darkness was lifted. And I realized just how terrible this Lent was. It was filled with struggle and dryness and sorrow that my heart was so cold. Every day was like a lifetime and the burdens would get heavier as the days wore on. Brief respites when I went to Confession and Mass and Holy Hours. But no lasting effect. As soon as I was out the door of the chapel it began again. Exhausting. But suddenly Easter comes and the old yeast is thrown out and the air is light. Prayers are pure joy. Mass is exhilaration. So I ponder. What the heck was going on this Lent? Anyone else experience this?
Yes, I found this Lent very tiring and burdensome. I felt like my family and myself were under attack every which way. Praying was and is my only consolation.
One thing was borne home to me this time round was that, contemplating Our Lady , the saints and the angels was that the greater they are the smaller and more childlike they are. All of them , even the greatest, they become like very,very little children. They grew small so that God could become great.
I just came across this beautiful painting of the Ascension and I don't want to forget to post it on May 10th.
I wasn't sure where to put this video and didn't think that it needed its own thread. Anyway, this family got together and sang this song on Easter Sunday. They did a good job, and it's nice to see family togetherness. http://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/20...cmp=ob_article_footer_mobile&intcmp=obnetwork
The Resurrection by Carl Heinrich Bloch, 1881 (public domain/Wikimedia) Features | Apr. 4, 2018 http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/a-mothers-letter-to-her-anti-catholic-son A Mother’s Letter to Her Anti-Catholic Son Yes, my son, Christ is risen! Kimberly Scott Yes, my son, Christ is risen! I have a close friend, a mother of six adults, who says the definition of wisdom is having a lot to say — and not saying it. I am always breaking this rule, which I suppose makes me a fool. But sometimes we have to speak from our hearts, even when we risk being misunderstood. Some saints were called “fools for Christ.” Perhaps one day I will have the great joy to be counted among them. Hence, this letter written on Easter Sunday: My dearest son, I wish I could share with you all the light, beauty and joy I have found since I entered the Catholic Church. I know your reluctance to believe “God is with us” springs from that universal question: If he’s with us, why is there so much suffering in the world? It’s a great mystery. Certainly suffering as an end in itself is a horror. Yet when suffering points beyond itself — when suffering points to Christ on the cross — it becomes redemptive and even sanctifying. I held your beloved father’s hand as he died, so I know that tears and grief, when joined to Christ’s suffering on the cross, can even become somehow “sweet.” As long as I abide in his love, I know nothing can harm me — not pain, illness or old age. Not even death. For God is with us, not far away somewhere in the clouds. And he comes closest to us when we suffer. I know this to be true, for I have met him in the darkest nights. Since Christ is risen and even death has been “disempowered” (to use a modern word), what have we left to fear? Disease, violence, fires, floods and other disasters can kill us. So what? With his death on the cross and his rising from the dead on the third day, Christ defeated death forever and has given us eternal life. This is good news, indeed — such good news that modern minds, trapped in a turmoil of noise, gloom and despair, can hardly believe it! It sounds like a fairy tale. Look at all those people in the cemeteries. They’re dead, aren’t they? Well, yes and no. Appearances can be deceptive. Unbelievably, the starlight in tonight’s sky left some of those stars hundreds or even thousands of years ago. Physicists tell us all objects in the world that appear so solid to us — the rocks, the trees, the Earth — are made up of invisible particles dancing in and out of existence. Life is a mystery. Even the latest scientific discoveries leave us in awe. To believe those particles are dancing in and out of existence is to take life on faith and to view its beauty with wonder. To believe those people lying dead in the graves are both dead (in this visible world) and alive (in God’s eyes) must also be taken on faith. Even gravity has to be taken on faith. You mean to tell me there’s an invisible force that anchors us to the Earth, and without it we’d fly off into outer space? That also sounds like a fairy tale. But whether or not you believe in gravity, you’re still the beneficiary of its goodness. You can’t escape from the goodness of gravity, nor can you escape from the goodness of God. For God holds us securely in the palm of his hand, just as gravity holds us securely to the Earth. And a thousand denials of reality can never make it untrue. What you see as me taking too many “risks” (because I do so much lowly or unpaid work for the Church, when I could earn much more money) actually springs from the interior peace that comes from giving up worry. Before I found God (or, rather, before he found me, because he always takes the first step), I frequently worried about many things in the world. I was often afraid, a dangerous passion, for violence springs not from God, but from man’s fears. When we know and love God (I’m talking here about the true God, not some phantom we’ve made up in our heads), fear is transfigured into trust. You’re afraid I’ll remain poor as a church mouse and be destitute in my old age. But what you misperceive as me taking “too many financial risks” is actually my refusal to be afraid. His perfect love casts out fear. I love you imperfectly, my son. And I’m sorry for that. Yet as Christ and his holy Mother reveal to us, the bond between a mother and son is sacred and cannot be easily broken, not in this life and not in the next. So let us set aside our differences and simply love one another with cheerful hearts, trusting that God will — and already has — taken care of everything. Christ is risen! With love, Your mother Editor's Note: Kimberly Scott is a pseudonym for the author, who wishes to remain anonymous.
Happy Feast of the Ascension of Our Lord. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL58g24NgWPIzvBk2IQVES_xC4WTm6-CDI&v=mmE4uon5OBk "HE ASCENDED INTO HEAVEN AND IS SEATED AT THE RIGHT HAND OF THE FATHER" 659 "So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God." 531 Christ's body was glorified at the moment of his Resurrection, as proved by the new and supernatural properties it subsequently and permanently enjoys. 532 But during the forty days when he eats and drinks familiarly with his disciples and teaches them about the kingdom, his glory remains veiled under the appearance of ordinary humanity. 533 Jesus' final apparition ends with the irreversible entry of his humanity into divine glory, symbolized by the cloud and by heaven, where he is seated from that time forward at God's right hand. 534 Only in a wholly exceptional and unique way would Jesus show himself to Paul "as to one untimely born", in a last apparition that established him as an apostle. 535 660 The veiled character of the glory of the Risen One during this time is intimated in his mysterious words to Mary Magdalene: "I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." 536 This indicates a difference in manifestation between the glory of the risen Christ and that of the Christ exalted to the Father's right hand, a transition marked by the historical and transcendent event of the Ascension. 661 This final stage stays closely linked to the first, that is, to his descent from heaven in the Incarnation. Only the one who "came from the Father" can return to the Father: Christ Jesus. 537 "No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of man." 538 Left to its own natural powers humanity does not have access to the "Father's house", to God's life and happiness. 539 Only Christ can open to man such access that we, his members, might have confidence that we too shall go where he, our Head and our Source, has preceded us. 540 662 "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." 541 The lifting up of Jesus on the cross signifies and announces his lifting up by his Ascension into heaven, and indeed begins it. Jesus Christ, the one priest of the new and eternal Covenant, "entered, not into a sanctuary made by human hands. . . but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf." 542 There Christ permanently exercises his priesthood, for he "always lives to make intercession" for "those who draw near to God through him". 543 As "high priest of the good things to come" he is the center and the principal actor of the liturgy that honors the Father in heaven. 544 663 Henceforth Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father: "By 'the Father's right hand' we understand the glory and honor of divinity, where he who exists as Son of God before all ages, indeed as God, of one being with the Father, is seated bodily after he became incarnate and his flesh was glorified." 545 664 Being seated at the Father's right hand signifies the inauguration of the Messiah's kingdom, the fulfillment of the prophet Daniel's vision concerning the Son of man: "To him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed." 546 After this event the apostles became witnesses of the "kingdom [that] will have no end". 547 IN BRIEF 665 Christ's Ascension marks the definitive entrance of Jesus' humanity into God's heavenly domain, whence he will come again (cf. Acts 1:11); this humanity in the meantime hides him from the eyes of men (cf. Col 3:3). 666 Jesus Christ, the head of the Church, precedes us into the Father's glorious kingdom so that we, the members of his Body, may live in the hope of one day being with him for ever. 667 Jesus Christ, having entered the sanctuary of heaven once and for all, intercedes constantly for us as the mediator who assures us of the permanent outpouring of the Holy Spirit. - The Catechism of the Catholic Church https://www.catholic.org/lent/ascension.php
