Seeing God in All Things

Today is the Feast of the Assumption, which is the commemoration of the day Mary was taken up into heaven.  I'm sitting here writing this entry at Adoration in the early morning hours in front of the blessed sacrament. For those of you who aren't Catholic, Adoration is a time when Catholics pray or sit in contemplation and Adoration in front of a consecrated host which is held in a Monstrance.  Our belief is that this is the real presence of Christ. I'm sitting here today on the 9th Anniversary of the day Lydia was diagnosed with leukemia.  So today is a day full of meaning and memories and a mixture of sadness and also celebration.  It is a day of sadness because it is the day my life and the life of my family, and in particular Lydia, was forever changed.  It's also a day my life was transformed.  As I've written before it is a day of a distinct "before and after"....there are all the events of my life from childhood to that moment and then there is everything "after"....it was a crossing of the Rubicon moment in life...a no going back, transformative event.  But today is also one of celebration because as a Feast Day it is a celebration of the moment Mary became the Queen of Heaven.

Ever since Lydia became ill I have identified strongly with Mary.  I saw a parallel in the fact that Mary was a mother who watched her child suffer and later die.  I felt that only a mother who lost a living breathing child could understand another mother's pain.  There is a part of the Rosary prayer in which one recites that to Mary we send our prayers, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. That particular line of the prayer did and does still make so much sense to me.  But the celebration of the Feast of Assumption tells us something important about Mary beyond my identification of her as the penultimate mother.  It tells me, as St Ignatius observed, to see God in all things. Let me explain.

When I said I identified with Mary as a mother who watched her child die, its important to note that Mary's story doesn't stop at the foot of the cross.  Mary's story goes on to the resurrection and ultimately her Assumption into heaven and so, while watching her son suffer torture and then death, her story, like Christ's is one of transformation in which something horrible in the form of Christ's death became the glory of resurrection.  And so we see that God was there with Jesus in his suffering in the cross.  He didn't cause it...humans did that....but he allowed it because ultimately, the transformation of something evil into something good can happen when we allow ourselves to see God's presence in all things.  Through Mary's journey, from her acceptance of God's will right through to the crucifixion and resurrection of her son, God's presence transforms something bad into something good if we let that happen.  Mary is the example of opening herself up to God and allowing Him to use her, and by extension others, to transform the events around us...... if we don't give up the ship and we stay the course.  

Going back to Lydia, I said that what happened with Lydia was a transformative event.  While God didn't cause Lydia's leukemia, he did allow it because he allows us as humans to make bad choices that do things like pollute the environment or take actions that cause disease, or sometimes things are just a bi-product of a world full of other living things.  By accepting what happened instead of fighting it and being angry, I can see that God was present even in the midst of suffering and that he can ultimately take something like Lydia's illness and death and through us, transform it into something good.  Sometimes we can see these transformative events and sometimes we have to trust they are there.  Mary didn't know what was coming next after watching her son die but she didn't give up the ship.  

For me, Lydia's illness allowed me to find a voice in writing; it brought me closer to God; it helped me to learn what was really important in life and to share that wisdom with others; and it taught me the value of time. I still make mistakes.  I still am short-tempered, and I cuss too much.  I still get angry and I still worry too much.  But I do try and look around me and find that moment where I can try and see God at work even in the very darkest moments and I know that through us, transformation is possible. Through us, God really is present in all things. 

Sent from my iPhone