It Was A Cold Night

Orig: 04/15/08

I awoke with a start early Sunday morning. A seizure was tickling its start in my throat; it’d been many months since my epilepsy had shown its ugly head. With a calm and fervent prayer, the seizure passed, but I feared it would return. Now fully awake, I noticed my nose was cold. I went downstairs and checked the temperature – 65, although the furnace was set for 70. Uh-oh. Walking to the basement, I surveyed the back of the furnace. Yup. Bunch of wires and stuff still in there, although what they were meant for was beyond me. But it was quiet, and that didn’t seem good. Going back to the thermostat, I turned the furnace off, then on. Nothing. As I watched, the temperature readout dropped to 64. With only 2 hours to go before waking for mass, and then to mom’s to be with and care for her all day and evening, it made no sense to call a repairman. I’d call on Monday morning. I hunkered back down under the covers, awake, waiting for the alarm to go off. Then the words came: “The flame has gone out between us”.

It was the prior Thursday when I fell from grace. There were lots of reasons to commit the sin, lots of reasons why it REALLY wasn’t that bad of a sin, even the concluding rationale that it wouldn’t prevent me from communion at Sunday mass. Committed to mom’s care every evening and every weekend, I couldn’t make any regularly scheduled confession hours – yet another reason it made rational sense that I would/could go to communion on Sunday. It wasn’t that big of a deal. Besides, a non-Catholic friend was to attend mass with me on Sunday. And what questions might she ask if I didn’t receive communion?? I didn’t want to contemplate that. As Friday and Saturday passed, along with my midnight adoration hours on Saturday, my conviction became stronger, my concerns and memory of the sin less. I barely mentioned it in 2 hours of adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, but it would be only a few hours later that I heard the words. “The flame has gone out”. I knew exactly what these words meant. All my rationalizations aside, God reminded me of my sin. I felt colder. Sleep did not come again.

Getting up and driving to mass, I remembered the words and I was thinking of possible responses to any questions from my friend. I had a newfound conviction not to receive communion because of my sin, but the conviction was nervous and unsteady despite the words I had heard. When everyone else stood and moved towards the altar, and my friend looked at me, could I not go up?

Arriving at the church early, I read my Morning Prayers, which included these words:
I was hard-pressed and was falling
But the Lord came to help me.
The Lord is my strength and my song;
He is my savior.

Still alone and with time, I flipped to the back of my Liturgy of the Hours to the Poetry section and read more:

Hear me, O God!
A broken heart is my best part:
Use still thy rod
That I may prove
Therein, thy love.

If thou hadst not
Been stern to me
But left me free,
I had forgot
Myself and thee

For sin’s so sweet,
As minds ill bent
Rarely repent,
Until they meet
Their punishment.


And: Love
Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked anything.
‘A guest,’ I answer’d, ‘worthy to be here’:
Love said, ‘You shall be he.’
‘I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear
I cannot look on Thee.’
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
‘Who made the eyes but I?’
‘Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.’
‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘who bore the blame?’
‘My dear, then I will serve.’
‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste My meat.’
So I did sit and eat.

And: O Deus Ego Amo Te
O God, I love thee, I love thee—
Not out of hope of heaven for me
Nor fearing not to love and be
In the everlasting burning.
Thou, thou, my Jesus, after me
Didst reach thine arms out dying,
For my sake sufferedst nails and lance,
Mocked and marred countenance,
Sorrows passing number,
Sweat and care and cumber,
Yea and death, and this for me,
And thou couldst see me sinning:
Then I, why should not I love thee,
Jesu, so much in love with me?
Not for heaven’s sake; not to be
Out of hell by loving thee;
Not for any gains I see;
But just the way that thou didst me
I do love and I will love thee;
What must I love thee, Lord, for then?
For being my king and God. Amen.

The gospel at mass re-enforced the importance of the words which still swam in my head and in my heart. The Good Shepherd called for me to “listen for His voice”. I found strength in my weakness from all these words that I had heard. When the time came, I didn’t go up to receive communion. Yet God and I were very close at that moment, though physically apart. My friend? She was running late that morning, and I met her later. I explained nothing.

I spent the rest of Sunday at mom’s house. On Monday morning, the temperature in my house was down to 54 when I called the repairman. He would not be out until the afternoon. I concluded my morning prayers and meditations, read the paper, and paid some bills. I was sitting at the kitchen table lightly considering what to do with the hours until the repairman showed up – when the heat suddenly came flowing out of the floor ducts. And some of the thoughts and words that had flashed unfocused in my head on Sunday came into clarity: drop by the local church and seek confession. That is something you must do now.

When I stuck my head into his office, the local parish priest was sorting a pile of papers. To my question he responded that “Of course I have time. Your confession will be a blessing for me also. It is always a blessing I am thankful for, to get away from filing.” So I confessed my sins and was absolved. And as I returned home and pulled into the garage, the words of an Andrew Lloyd Webber song played: “Any where you go, let me go too. Love me, that’s all I ask of you.”

Amen. I am thankful for the words he speaks to me, and that he helps me to hear them.

When I arrived back home and checked the thermostat, the temperature had moved up to 64 degrees. Things seemed right again with the furnace. I called back the repairman and cancelled the repair order.

“The flame was back on.”