One After the Other

 

It's been one of those weeks readers where you hear of a lot of people in your life that are suffering. A member of my extended family was diagnosed with cancer and a friend of a relative just lost her three year old to brain cancer. Yet at the same time, a friend of mine is making her solemn profession of vows and another friend just graduated with her master's degree.

It seems in life that things happen "one after the other," whether they are good or bad things. Maybe even both at the same time so we don't lose hope. Life can be heavy and you sometimes wonder just how will you get through a single day and then all of a sudden something works out, something is given to you, a door opens, prayers are answered.

In the midst of it all, in the words of a priest that I attended a recent talk said, "keep the Holy Eucharist as your North Star." Before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament we can pour it all out and He is there to receive it, receive us--He wants us to come to Him. He is waiting and eager to hear from us. We can thank Him, love Him, ask Him, cry before Him and through it all He is present.

Something that struck me a lot this Pentecost Sunday is how the Holy Spirit is known as the Comforter and the Sanctifier. If those two ideas come together, it sort of is like blending peace and suffering. The comfort He brings is a source of joy and the purifying strips us of all that is not Him. Perhaps when we find ourselves hit with heavy news, we can remember that "to them that love God, all things work together unto good."

Joy and suffering, peace and trials--such is the course of this life, which will shortly bring us before Him, Whom we have loved through it all.