Flowers for the Feast
by Sherry Antonetti in Faith on Tuesday, November 10, 2009 6:00 AM
One recent weekend, my sister and her husband celebrated the baptism of their first child.
My sister had been worried about the expense of managing the planned feast. She’d wanted an arrangement of pink roses and purple flowers to place on the table with the cake, but ultimately decided she couldn’t splurge on that, given their budget.
Unknowingly, I picked flowers to send her—sight unseen, over the phone—that were just what she’d hoped to have as a center piece but decided she couldn’t manage.
We’d just been trying to say, “Thinking of you,” and span the 1000 miles that separated us on that day. The Holy Spirit used that moment to grant her heart’s desire for beauty and our desire for presence.
Moments of Grace
God uses every moment of our lives to call us towards Him. We spend much of our lives trying to throw things in the way of that communion. It is easy to get lost in the back to school lists, the laundry, the forms and bills and projects that require long hours, such that we just want to “get things done.”
The day becomes a quest to check things off the list so we can then chose a means of “taking a break” that constitutes disengaging from others. Flipping through all the channels, searching for something to watch or surfing the internet waiting for something interesting to read or see, the lures of this life can draw us away from savoring why we are here. In our sinfulness, we substitute watching for waiting, and seeking stimulation rather than the experience of being fully present to those around us and thus God.
Alternatively, the world piles on so that we start to think our worries about the bills or our weight or the health of a loved one or our jobs are so great that we don’t have time to pray or consider our relationships with God or others. We push Him aside or pull back because He can’t help with these important “real world” things which worry us. We seek to control and compartmentalize our lives, but love cannot be limited, and God cannot be contained.
God Feeds Us
God provided physical manna in the dessert and fed the 5000 loaves of bread and actual fish. God knows what our hearts, souls and bodies need. He can bring us through the times when money is scarce, hearts are low and all of life feels hard. We just have to allow ourselves to “Be still and know I am here,” to know like Peter, that we must stay with Jesus and say “Lord, where would we go?”
The sacraments in our lives, be they luminous, joyful, glorious or sorrowful, remove us from the minutia and the clutter of every day and they help facilitate sacramental moments when we fall awake, keenly aware the presence of God. Baptisms, funerals and weddings remind us that we cannot wait just for Sundays and special occasions of exquisite joy or pain to experience the true nature of the relationship we are called to have with God and each other. All that we do in ordinary time also reflects our willingness to engage others as we would love Christ, to be in communion.
Setting a New Pace
One of the greatest gifts God allows us is the choice to be not of this world, to step back from being governed purely by the onward crush of time. The pace of the “real world” often demands that we account for every minute as a commodity wasted or used. But to say “Lord, where would we go?” is to surrender one’s self to Christ, to allow one’s self to be used by God for others, to not be governed by time or the cares of this world, to be willing to exist on manna and trust it will be there every morning.
Being present to others demands effort, time and sublimation of that part of us that seeks to withdraw. Being in communion means we don’t have a time off when loving can be suspended for the business of living. The world still demands that we work and we take care of the every day, but we have the Eucharist, and adoration and prayer and the sacraments to sustain us like manna in the dessert.
Availing ourselves of these gifts, God will replace the part that seeks to be numb and removed, with a part that seeks to be steeped in others and He’ll even take away all that makes us sick with worry, fear and pain. It is hard work, hard to believe even; but seeking God first will guarantee we get our hearts desire ... right down to the very flowers we wanted at the feast.
— Sherry Antonetti is a fortunate spouse, freelance writer and a full time mother to nine sources of inspiration, laughs, and a lot of laundry.
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