Emptiness and Desolation

I sometimes forget that this feeling of emptiness and desolation ... and acute loneliness ... really isn't anything new for me. Perhaps for anyone, but I can only speak for myself.

It's horrible ... that wrench in the gut, that sense that not a thing is really right between me and my world. That feeling that I have no purpose, no hope. That feeling that I am a walking, talking, gaping hole of Nothingness.

I think I feel that way above all because I am that way. St Augustine says that that is how we are built, constructed, created by God. Lewis says that goes along with being a creature rather than the Creator. I feel like a walking, gaping Hole because I am a walking, gaping Hole. I feel like living Need because I am living Need.

Then what is ... what was ... Mom? To me?

A living, walking, talking, loving Ikon of Mary, Mother of God; and a living, walking, talking loving Ikon of Christ, of God.

For the One I really Need is God. God through Mary. God by means of Mary. The Church, the Body of Christ, is the instrumentum crucis through whom I receive Christ. God comes to us through the God-Man Christ; who comes to us through the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Who is Imago Dei like all of us, isn't she.

Oh but how painful it all is. I'm looking forward to OOR (Office of Readings, Matins) today ... I think I can be sure that there will be a Reading reflecting exactly the kind of thing that we all go through in experiencing this pain, this loneliness, this horrible isolation. I look forward as well to MP (Morning Prayer, Lauds) and later today to EP (Evening Prayer, Vespers). The EP of the Office for the Dead has such beautiful things ... the first Psalm, 121, is so moving, and is the Psalm Mom specifically asked to be said at her Funeral. After 121, there's the De Profundis Ps 130, and finally the Hymn to the Kenotic Christ in Philippians. MP's prayers in turn include the moving Psalm 51 and Canticle of Isaiah. This is to me all very comforting ... not in the sense of "making things seem OK" or in the sense of "making me feel better." Things are not OK. I do not feel better. But I do feel strengthened, in the etymological sense of being comforted.

Blessed are those that Mourn ... for they shall be comforted. Strengthened, that is, not anesthetized into not feeling what we should feel, what we want to feel, what we need to feel, if we are to be human and experience loss in this world.

Father Job, pray for us.
S Robert Bellarmine, pray for us
S Joseph, pray for us
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us

Charles Delacroix
Feast of St Robert Bellarmine