Alone into the Alone

At one level, of course, this is exactly what does not happen. I ... and all of us ... are interconnected through the vast family tree that is truly God's Family Tree that extends throughout this world, in the Here and Now, and also far, far into the next world, that is in some ways the more real world, the more concrete, the more intensely existent world.

St Augustine's image of Time as a stream is so vivid. Add that image of the Tree and we get Time as a stream passing over this vast horizontally billowing Tree ... ancient Tree, very old, ever new ... seems even more vivid. The Pope's Theology of the Body and Von Balthasar's vision of the Church over time really paint such a vivid, engaging portrait of a truly Extended Family. CS Lewis says that we can't expect God, Who resides in Eternity, to look at our Time-Bound world as we do. I sit here and feel myself very alone, very isolated, very much the individual. But take away my narrow focus on the Here and Now, and of course the last thing I am is isolated. Dial back to 1954 ... when I was born ... and to my Mom I am seent to be intimately and even eternally connected. Dial back to 1953 ... when I was conceived ... and to my Dad I am seen to be intimately and eternally connected. Dial back to 1921 ... when both of them were born ... and I am seen to be intimately and eternally connected to my Grandparents. Dial back further yet ... and keep dialing back ... looking at not only lineal ancestry but collateral connections ... and I am seen to be intimately and eternally connected to ... literally Everyone. Not in some pantheistic sense; and not in some legalistic sense of entries in a genealogical table. But as living, eternally interconnected Persons in this vast biological ... and superbiological, supernatural ... Tree of Life extending back to Adam and Eve and to their Creator. I ... like all of us ... are in this sense truly "in" Adam, to use St Paul's simple preposition for this vast vision of humanity.

Likewise in the vast vision of Salvation and Renewal and Regeneration, I am "in" Christ Jesus; as we all are, in the Church, the Body of Christ; and in those collateral "ecclesial communities" and even beyond, who knows how far beyond ... for to be "in Adam" and to be "in Christ" are both vivid, concrete, existentially vast realities that God sees very clearly indeed, in His eternal Now.

I on the other hand still see in a glass darkly. I and all who mourn and weep in this Valley of Tears. But even in this existential Loneliness immersed in the Here and Now, we are not so Alone: Even Jesus in His Gethsemani, and on His Cross when in his loneliness He looked about Him and felt in His Aloneness that God the Father Himself had abandoned Him.

I can't see this in my glass that seems so murky and dark. But I don't have to see it. God sees it. And Sr Rupp and the Church are so right, I can by Prayer ... if not my own, if I am too weak to prya, then in the Prayer of the Holy Spirit, Who, St Paul tells us, prays for us in our weakness ... in this Prayer I can be with Jesus in His Gethsemane; and He can be with me in mine.

Oh how horribly lonely it is to sit in this room. I look over at my Mom's chair, and she is not there. Her chair is empty. I feel as if nothing is right when she is not here, in her chair. This room becomes a Gethsemani for my tears and my horrible, vast feeling of emptiness. The empty chair empties this room and I am left alone, and empty inside. Alone. Utterly Alone. Even if not Alone when seen from God's Eternal Now yet it feels so Alone in my miserable, isolated, existential Here and Now.

Oh God How Alone this feels. But You are here in my Aloneness even as You were there in the Aloneness of Job and even as You are there in the Aloneness of each and every one of us when we feel this horrendous Loneliness and Apartness.

What else is there to do than to go forth from this Aloneness into Your Aloneness.

Her chair is empty. And my heart is empty. And I feel ... I feel in my heart ... dead. And even in this I can by Your Grace go from my Alone into Your Alone. For today is I'm told Holy Saturday ... all days in this world are Holy Saturday. And as the Monk of Holy Spirit Monastery says, to be in Holy Saturday is to allow my own dead heart to find a place in the Dead Heart of Jesus in the Tomb of Holy Saturday. To allow my own dead heart to find a place in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. And in the Immaculate Heart of Mary in her Dormition.

Oh God Who In Gethsemane wept Tears of Blood in Your Aloneness and in Your Loneliness. You were stripped of everything and everyone. I feel stripped and empty as well. By Your Grace I add my tears to Your Own Tears and ask You to Wash me in Your Tears as well. Let Your Tears as well be joined to the Tears of Your Sorrowful Mother. May the Tears of God by my tears; and may my tears be the Tears of God.

Let us pray.

God, the Creator and Redeemer of all the faithful, grant to the souls of your servants and handmaids the remission of all their sins, that through our sincere prayers they may obtain the pardon they have always desired. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Lord, God, by the Precious Blood and Tears which Your Divine Son, Jesus, shed in the Garden, deliver the souls in Purgatory, especially those who are the most forsaken of all. Bring them into Your Glory, where they may praise and bless You forever. Amen.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen.

May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

Charles Delacroix
Monday of the 25th Week of Ordinary Time