PURPLE HAZE...LOVING GRACE

"But may I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." Galatians 6, 14

How difficult and yet how beautiful it is to bleed...if it is for LOVE.
In the moments of immense grace we may desire total union with the crucified, and we may even ask for the cross! Our prayer is answered and suffering arrives but it is not what we expected...(but what we needed). We forget that it is precisely in that moment of pain where and when we can so deeply be in communion with Jesus Christ, who in His enormous agony offered the chalice to His Father because of its extreme bitterness, but received it and drank it ALL because of the sweetness of His obedient Love!
It is so easy to idealize it all, even the cruelty of the Cross- there, hanging seeing the beautiful face of Mother Mary! And we do not think of the furious crowd who blasphemes and has covered the bleeding, sweating face of the Lord with sacrilegious saliva! Both are true...
Hanging and crying "I THIRST" with ALL the Love of GOD! But we do not think of the total abandonment that moved Him to cry "My God, My God why have you forgotten me?"
We only know what the cross is when we live it and we have united ourselves with the Lord's passion. This is what compassion means...com-passion, with-the-passion...at the foot of the Cross...on the Cross! We cry with those who cry, we laugh with those who laugh!

And this is our life; the constant blessing and battle, between falls and merciful recoveries, through which we learn to accept the Cross just as it is, just as it comes...trusting, trusting, trusting fully that it is the Cross that the All-knowing GOD has willed for our salvation and sactification- for the intimate union the Father wills to have with us through Jesus Christ our Lord!

"My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will." Matthew 26, 39

How it hurts...even before the Cross, having to abandon our idea of the suffering we wanted or waited for! How difficult to deny ourselves and trust more in GOD's wisdom than in our ignorance! But to realize that this very process means dying to ourselves is an immense blessing, since it becomes one with the bitter chalice that Jesus himself accepted in loving obedience. It is the FIAT through which came the cross...that cross we wanted so much for love of God in those moments of burning faith!

Jesus was captured in Gethsemani and taken to the high priest...on the way he saw the blood of the slaughetered paschal lambs running down the walls of the temple. Thousands of lambs were being sacrificed and offered as holocausts for the remission of sin within those walls. Jesus, bleeding and chained-up, knew that His Blood would have to be shed to cleanse those and all the sins of humanity! The TEMPLE was to bleed and its crimson rivers would flow and run to meet every tear of repentance and every contrite heart...BLOOD TO TEARS!
And so it was...and so it is!
BLESSED BE GOD FOREVER!

The Church dresses in purple to walk up Calvary in LOVE, for LOVE, with LOVE and towards LOVE! We can only begin this journey saying YES in Gethsemani, that is, in the midst of our present condition and all the small and great sufferings we have. Just as we are right now! and not how we think we should be. Know right now that GOD is loving you! And that your suffering is not in vain...it is gain! (Phillipians 1, 21) Know that His arms, once and for all, are outstrectched and His Heart traspassed and thirsting for you!

So it is the Lord Himself, eternally wounded (John 20, 28) for Love who calls you and me to enter the mystery of the desert, abide in His Word to defeat all evil (Matthew 4, 1-11) and to come as we are into His presence. That we may allow Him to touch us and heal us, and we may respond by entering His wounds, through which His Blood flows out to cover and transform our lives! Let us cry "My Lord and my GOD!" and join the saints in saying:

"Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church..." Colossians 1,24