I've got some more time to write! As a follow-up to my previous post, I wanted to write about the Faith aspect of what I'm going through-- it definitely deserves its own blog entry, by itself. That previous post was the natural reality of my situation. Now I'll talk about the supernatural aspect.

I've gotten through the first three sessions of this teaching, and I've been praying a lot about it. It says in Isaiah 55:9:



God has been working my heart towards pursuing the diaconate. I went from, "This will be impossible, it can't work" to "I can see in my mind's eye how it can work". I went from, "I'm not sure I want to do this" to "I want to do this because I can see how the charisms God has blessed me with would allow me to be a great servant to others as a deacon".

I had an experience a few weeks ago, where there was an elderly woman whom I see at church pretty frequently. We had coffee and donuts in the basement after one particular Mass, and something compelled me to go up to her and ask how she was doing. At first she gave me a generic sort of, "I'm doing ok." Then, after a moment, something caused her to open up to me. She became tearful, and said "My daughter is mentally challenged-- she's down in the Twin Cities in the hospital because she's been having seizures."

The words came to me immediately: "Well, just never ever forget that Jesus is here by your side. He's always there with you, standing right next to you." She smiled and said, "That's why I'm here [at church]."

Last weekend, I saw her again, this time at the pancake breakfast I was helping with. Things were going a hundred miles per hour, and I'd walked out there just to take a quick headcount before I had to flip pancakes again-- so I didn't get a chance to stop and converse with her. But she saw me, looked up, and I have never, ever in my life had someone look at me that way: it was the warmest, most sincere smile-- like seeing me again had lit up her entire weekend. I just gave her a big smile back, and a wave.

And it was all just because I'd reminded her of how much Jesus loves her!

Going back to Isaiah then, "my ways are higher than your ways"-- I believe that the Lord is giving me these experiences in response to my claiming my healing. What He's doing is showing me the way to obtain the healing-- the path I should walk. We had a finance council meeting on Tuesday, and our business administrator said that we were looking for opportunities to increase outreach ministries. I asked him what this meant, and the first example he gave was "bringing the Eucharist to the sick and homebound."

I prayed about it last night, and the Lord told me that I should pursue it! In fact, I can bring The Word and the healing ministries to people this way! In fact today I emailed the aforementioned business administrator, to see if he can connect me with the right person to get me started.

This all reminds me of those exercises people do at work retreats, where they have to be blindfolded, then fall over backwards, trusting the other person to catch them. There is an action which needs to happen for the outcome to occur. It's like it was written in James 2:26: "For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also."

In the case of Faith in God, I believe He's asking me to perform a similar exercise: He's asking me to fall over backwards, so-to-speak, by performing works. After all, it was only through Him-- on that Holy Thursday, after receiving the Eucharist-- that I was able to experience, if only for a handful of seconds, pure love of those around me, without the derealization and without the barrier.

So He's already proven to me that it's possible. It's like he gave me a brief taste, just to see what it was like. I think I can combine the above with some of the things I wrote about in my previous post. It's like that old parable of the drowning man, which I'm sure you've all heard-- He's sent me "two boats and a helicopter" in the form of all the above, plus some medical help, the possibility of taking a leave from work, and a whole host of other things.

He's given all of the components-- now I need to have Faith through action.