Presents From Him

You’ve been reading lately of some of my anxieties, but this blog is to help relieve yours, not add to them. And so I always endeavor to show you that your anxieties --- and mine --- are so totally unnecessary, if we just have faith.

“Just”???

I know such faith is no easy thing. But sometimes the answers to our anxieties are so simple; sometimes they must merely be said aloud to Him, and we feel His comfort.

And sometimes He even gives us the words to say to Him.

A friend recently gave me a very worn, very old, and obviously very treasured book of hers as a birthday gift. I’m sure it was difficult for her to part with it, but perhaps she felt I needed it. And perhaps, although I didn’t know it, I did. Last night, amidst my anxieties, I read these words --- no, I prayed from my heart these words, truly given to me as a present --- from Him:

Whole days pass by, and never a kind word do I hear; it seems as though the entire world has forgotten me. Alas! It is so true; I count for nothing on earth. I am like a tiny ant here below --- like a little ant hidden away and unnoticed in the dense foliage of a mighty forest. Any yet --- I, too, have a heart --- a heart that yearns much, very much, for the sympathy it needs.

Ah, at least one word! True, I hear so many of them; but there are none that find their way into my heart, into my soul. They do indeed distract me for just a little while; but then they go away from me again and leave me as sad and weary as before.

Oh, how I long for a word that rings true with the sweet music of a father’s voice --- music to soothe and comfort my troubled heart --- a word full of life and full of love for me?

How often it has come home to me with gentle force that the word for which I so ardently long comes to me from nowhere else than from the tabernacle; and it comes to me in the blessed hours of solitude, when the noise and bustle of the world are far from me, when I sit at Jesus’ feet in holy recollection. When Jesus speaks, it is obvious that He wants no other witnesses than angels.

So I will go to Him and tell Him. O what will I tell Him? I will tell Him all my miseries, my worries, my daily crosses. I will do as Mary did. Upon His sacred feed I will shed the tears of my sufferings, the balsam of my thoughts, and the odor of my love; and then I will listen to what He has to say to me.

O Jesus, tell me, are You satisfied with me? Do I really comfort Your Heart a little when I visit You? And still more when I receive You in Holy Communion? Or do I but add to the great pain that men cause You?

Do You find many imperfections in my soul? At times I think I am still just as bad as I ever was; again I think that I have become better, that I have become a little more pious. Then is my heart divided between fear and hope, between sorrow and joy.

I promise you so many things every day, and afterwards I commit the same faults again, just as if I had promised You nothing. Do You then love me less because of this? Have You not become tired of me, my Jesus? Else, why should these persistent distractions annoy me? Else, whence this dryness of soul? Is this perhaps the means you use to make me feel Your humiliating, yet sanctifying, hand? My loving Savior, surely You know that I love You! You are the first in my thoughts and the last; I live, so to speak for You alone.

O say at least one word to me, my Jesus, only one word! See, I kneel here before You, a soul steeped in misery and dragging itself along the road to perfection --- O so slowly! But it is a soul that loves You truly from the heart’s very depths --- a soul that is willing, out of love for you, to make any and every sacrifice --- even the greatest. O Jesus, is not such a soul worthy to remain near You?
Eucharistic Whisperings, by Windrid Herbst S.D.S.

Somewhere in my being were these words, which I could not voice, and I could not pray. But He gave them to me as a present; He is so good that way.