He's waiting for us, too

We've been talking about waiting on the Lord...waiting for the Lord...getting ready for His coming.

But wait...

He's waiting for us, too!

Jesus is waiting for us to hear His call...to answer the door of our hearts...to let Him truly be the King of our lives and the Savior of our souls.

It's time. It's time to step up and do something for Him.

Even I think to myself, "What do you mean, 'Do something for Him'? Haven't I been serving Him all this time?"

Well, okay...like I was telling Rob tonight, I try to remember that I'm doing God's work...especially because I work at a Catholic school and my official title has a lot to do with spiritual formation.

But the Lord is asking me to give more of myself. I do the work...sure, I share my experiences...but what's lacking is that agape love in what I do and in how I share...the kind of love that is self-sacrificing...the kind that doesn't expect anything in return...the love that does not fear hurt or rejection or ridicule.

So, yes, I serve...but only to a certain point. When I get to that point, I'm afraid.

I'm tired of being afraid. I'm tired of feeling so down and discouraged. Sometimes I feel like I've been waiting for someone to come along and pull me out of my rut. Gary has actually done a very good job of helping me through, as other friends have in the brief conversations we've shared.

But he or anyone else can't be my everything.

Unfortunately (but maybe it's not so unfortunate), there probably won't be a someone who will come along and "fix" everything...someone who will bring back that hopeful idealism we once had...the saint that walks through the door and comes out of nowhere to save us all (or was it Archie tonight at prayer meeting...hmmm, God's timing? hehe).

God is making us realize our brokenness and our need for purification because He wants to be that Someone for us. He is the one - through His Word (like the 2nd Reading for this Sunday says) - telling us that we need to be spotless...we need to be ready...we need to anticipate His coming with eagerness. We need to look at every single aspect of our lives and examine whether it is pleasing to Him - or - only pleasing to ourselves...whether is strengthens and encourages the faith of other people around us - or - weakens and discourages those who are under our influence.

I understood this years ago...but something happened...and I could no longer hold on to the faith I used to have. I never said it wasn't worth it, but over time that's what I ended up believing. Being a real Christian was not a walk in the park. I think I had expected it to be. Maybe a part of me hoped that once I gave my life to Christ, I'd be almost superhuman...where nothing would hurt me, nothing would scare me, nothing would tempt me so strongly that I wouldn't fall back - or "backslide" as they say.

The fact of the matter is that, Jesus doesn't only want us to enter into His divine life as God - doing as He did to proclaim the Kingdom, leading people out of sin and into salvation, even praying for miracles in His name and seeing them happen before our eyes. He also calls us to enter into his very humanity - his joy, his sorrow, his pain and persecution, his love, his friendship, his sacrifice.

It's all about both the "His" and the "his"...the big H being everything of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity...the little h being just like one of us...yet always humble, obedient, faithful to the end.

Will we let Christ transform our lives and restore us?

Dare I ever say that I don't need transforming and restoration, someone please knock me upside the head.

There are things I need to change, attitudes I need to get rid of, and fears I need to overcome...but I can't do it without Him.

Why am I confessing my weakness as a leader in both my school and church communities? Because I'm not going to pretend to be perfect. I can't live on a pedestal.

At the same time, however, I have come to understand that certain people God brings into my life need something from me and that I am expected by Him to be not just an example but
His very hands and feet and heart in the world.

So when I die, I hope people will not remember any of the great things I accomplished. I pray, rather, that they will remember the encounters and conversations we had and say that they met Jesus.

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"Reflecting immediately after Communion with the Lord God is to me a most sacred moment. When I am in this sacred presence, sometimes my desire for special friends is that they be lifted free from their troubles and inertia of faith. When this desire happened recently, the powerful and challenging word came to me, as an inner voice. It said to me, 'Bring them to the Eucharist.' Now this left me wondering all the more, 'And how am I to do that?' "

- Fr. Roch A. Coogan, OFM from 201 Inspirational Stories of the Eucharist