My first weekend away from my toddler and husband, what should I do? A girls weekend of wine drinking and lounging? Several nights on the town staying up late dancing? A weekend of spa treatments to heal my postpartum body and tight stressed-out shoulders? Nah! How bout a weekend of spiritual worship at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in the middle-of-no-where-back-woods Alabama?! A weekend full of a lot of kneeling during the day and sleeping on a hard twin bed that rolled on wheels at night. I left exhausted, yet refreshed in something more essential than emotional or even physical well being, spiritual health.
BEFORE: The day leaving I resisted, I wanted to stay home with my cute toddler and make love to my near husband (perfect time, just finished my period- shout out to all my Natural-Family-Planning ladies). A three hour drive in the evening (staying up to 11-yikes!) with four stranger Catholic ladies and risking catching COVID felt crazy. Months of quarantine and social distancing though, hurt my faith the most. Mass online followed by inconsistent attendance leaving my son with his grandparents, plus the cancellation of my woman’s discipleship quad (aka best bible study ever!) and forgoing confession- left me so spiritually out of shape. I needed spiritual bootcamp, so I swallowed my fears and got into a stranger’s car with the intent to meet Jesus, to remember my first love.
SACRAMENTS: The Great Physician proscribed me some serious treatments available in the Catholic tradition, some lacking in my Presbyterian heritage (shout out to all converts, and love to my Protestant brothers and sisters).
Adoration: Time gazing at the real presence of Christ, a humble cracker framed by a golden sun monstrance. The monstrance sat on high pedestal surrounded by golden gothic towers- a heavenly church within an earthly church of Italian marble and German stained-glass windows. “How ostentatious”, my Protestant mind thought, originally condemning the nun Sister Angelica for using 50 million dollars to built a Shrine with housing for her Poor Clares nuns. As I kept gazing my thoughts shifted, “Why not spend our money for God? To give a little glimpse of heaven with our limited resources?” I felt more connected to the view my older sister now sees.
Eucharist: Mass, full of silence and chanting prayers seems dull, my knees ache especially kneeling on cold marble, and my mind often wanders during ranting homilies. Being such a spiritual wuss I kind of sighed at the thought of attending two masses two days in a row. Yet, as I sat in the stiff pew, I hungered for holiness, wholeness, literally presented in the source and summit of our Faith: the Eucharist. Kneel, eat, be restored. Mana in the dessert, food from angels feeding Elijah on the brink of death, the Last Supper, literally the bread of Life, given tongue as you kneel wiggling off your face mask, feeling naked and vulnerable. The Shrine features several brutally beautiful crucifixes showing Christ whipped, bleeding, and with raw pain on the cross. Based on the Shroud of Turin, I glanced into my Lord’s face and felt so unworthy and so unholy to receive Him. The day I feel entitled to the wedding feast of the Lamb, means time to fast because as I gazed on the battered face of God-man crowned with thorns I remember that I deserve nothing, but I am given everything.
Confession: Almost nine months forgoing the opportunity for free therapy and spiritual counsel, I ran to the parking lot for “drive through confession.” The priest sat in a parked car while I quickly listed off the deepest weights on my conscience. Prior to confession, the Holy Spirit convicts me of my sins, often in sanctuaries, I write them down, so the whole confession part takes a few minutes. These listed sins shall not be shared here of course but shall die with the priests who heard them (after all it was in Alabama, not California). But I will share that the unknown priest’s counsel stuck with me, reminding me to avoid certain temptations that seem innocent yet slide quickly into sin. This blessed gift of confession, I yearned for the most in my Protestant faith, a chance to be given more grace, to work on redemption, not redeemed once and for all, but being redeemed until we meet our All in All.
Worship: Not a sacrament technically, but definitely sacred, and something that runs deep within my Presbyterian roots. Worship is both seen and unseen. Fifteen cloistered nuns live at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament. Over eight years of discernment, between the age of nineteen and twenty seven, women can chose to forgo their lives for a life dedicated to worship and prayer, never leaving the Shrine. A voluntary life sentence of exclusion? Do these women just hate the world and think they are above the laity? An entire unseen women elite forces dedicated to praying for us, interceding for our world suffering with pandemic, injustice and social distancing spurred by a rise in technology: what astounding love for God and neighbor to intentionally sacrifice for both!
Also, lovely Catholic women, some with choral backgrounds, sang our hearts out in worship that night. Remembering my older sister singing at Christian summer camps, and even at my wedding, a balm of tears healed my soul as I sang with other women for the first time since her death. Worship, both done by and done for us, brings right relationship to God.
AFTER: Highs and lows, peaks and valleys, roses and thorns, whatever cheesy metaphor you like to use to describe the rollercoaster of life, definitely occurred upon my return. Tired, in the best way, on a spiritual runner’s high, the enemy quickly tripped my stride. The afternoon I returned, our AC broke so we spent two nights in high eighty degree hellhole. Thomas and I started bickering and the doctor gave a little bit of bad health news concerning my husband. Yes, the AC is quickly fixed, my husband I make up, and we have a game plan to heal him; however I felt so grateful to be so filled so I could pour our patience for a rough start into the week. Also, these little sufferings revealed my idol of comfort. I clung to what my Lord said to me when I stammered, “what if I start fighting with my husband and act selfishly for the billionth time?”, his gentle reply, “you can always come back, I am here.”
Sacraments matter because in this life you will have suffering, but only through being united in Christ, you can overcome the world. So surrender to feed your starving soul, mommas, wives and women of God with the sacraments.
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