Every brushstroke of the painting below was a prayer for the Roses of Hope’s Garden…
Moment to Moment With The Bridegroom
During the homily at the closing Mass of a recent Theology of the Body Institute week which delved into God’s beauties, Father Ryan Mann marveled at how the presenter, that very morning at breakfast, had seen the wealth of a single drop of maple syrup which had landed on his paper placemat. Its amber translucence in the morning sun, the taste that drop contained, all of God it held–the very gift it was–shining there beside his plate… That image has come back to me many times in the weeks since. How easy it would have been to miss the “moment” of that drop of glory–an invitation to eternity! And how easy it is for me to miss those invitations to eternity in the moments given to me.
Mindfulness has become a buzzword today–with some validity. Spiritual writers of every stripe have much to say on “the power of now.” Yet “now” contains so much more than slowing down, attentiveness, focus, self-regulation. In the Christian perspective, “now” contains relationship with the One who gave that moment. “Now” is an invitation to Presence within the present. This very moment that I am living woos me into eternity, if I let it. Father Jean Pierre de Caussade, in his classic Abandonment to Divine Providence, asserts, “We can no longer consider our moments as trifles since in them is a whole kingdom of sanctity and food for angels.”
Kingdom of Sanctity! Food for Angels! Panis Angelicus. Father De Caussade continues, “Every moment of our lives (those most distressing and those most agreeable) may be a…communion with the divine love, and this communion of every moment may produce as much fruit in our souls as that which we receive in the Communion of the Body and Blood of the Son of God.” Astounding, this statement. In Matthew’s Gospel (18:10), Jesus reveals to his disciples that the Guardian Angels of children “constantly behold my heavenly Father’s face”–this in the context of his admonition that “unless you change and become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of God”(18:3). We are invited to a childlike innocence here, the innocence of accepting our moments as given, with our Angels as intermediaries. And given for such purpose! Our Bridegroom’s longing heart cries out to us through Father De Caussade’s plea, “O, all you who thirst, learn that you have not far to go to find the fountain of living water; it flows quite close to you in the present moment; therefore hasten to find it.” May we feed our Angels by our “hastening!”
Father De Caussade assures us that the “royal road to sanctity,” to heaven here and in eternity, does not consist in spiritual ideas, nor in the lives of the saints, nor in finding the perfect spiritual director, but in being united to God inherent in every circumstance presenting itself to us, uniquely tailored for our good. “You search for hidden ways of belonging to God, good people, but the only way is that of making use of whatever he sends you… all that is necessary is to accept everything, placing no obstacle in the way of its action, but letting it accomplish its work.” And then, as those it bursts from him, “Do we not know that…by every event, the divine love desires to unite us to himself–that he has ordained, arranged, or permitted everything about us, everything that happens to us, with a view to this union? All that happens to me therefore will be food for my nourishment, water for my cleansing, fire for my purification, and a channel of grace for all my needs.”
Oh yes, Father Jean. My head believes all this. But my heart so often tells a different story. The agendas I have, so evidenced by anything from a disgruntled “not the fourth day of rain in a row!” to my instant resistance to the deeply troubled, recently homeless relative suddenly sitting on my front porch last week. The entitlements dwelling within me–“but I wasn’t made for brick walls right outside my dining room window!” The insistences–“these relationships just can’t go on this way.” The validation I didn’t even know I expected but missed in its absence. Not to mention the heart-energy spent on past “fuels” versus present reality, misplaced yearnings, idols I can’t quite name…
But you, dear Jesus, you come to my rescue. I can either have union with my disgruntlements, disappointments, unmet expectations in any given moment, or I can have union with YOU, espoused to me in every circumstance of every “now.” You are my sufficiency, you are my heart to my relative on my porch at 8:00 in the morning, you are my beauty within when the brick wall without invites me deeper. “The present moment is the ambassador of God to declare his mandates,” says Father De Caussade. “The heart listens and pronounces its “fiat”…everything is a help to (the soul) and is, without exception, an instrument of sanctity. The one thing necessary can always be found for it in the present moment.”
You are the “one thing necessary,” dear Bridegroom, so I cling to you in this right-now. Let me not miss its inherent grace! I surrender my earth-bound filters, and choose yours, choose the eternity you are carving for me from this here-and-now. And suddenly, though my troubled relative hasn’t left and the brick wall is close as ever, I am overcome by the intense blue of the sky, the rustle of wind in the trees, the soaring of birds in flight. Beauty captures my heart. Eternity enters in. Lightness, freedom penetrate, as my own lens gives way to yours. I sense a new capacity to love, and to accept, because your perfect humanity lights up mine—in this very particular moment. Father De Caussade’s encouragement makes sense, “Your life flows on uninterruptedly in this unsounded abyss in which each present moment contains all that is best for you, and as such must be loved and esteemed.”
Jesus, however the “drops of maple syrup” you give me present themselves, let me not miss you, and my eternity with you, in them. Teach me to “love,” to “esteem” the right-now you inhabit. Let my Guardian Angel be fed by my attunement to you in-the-moment. Father Jean De Caussade, cheering me on from heaven, I affirm with you, “I wish to live according to my faith, and since the divine action is applied by every single thing and at every moment for my perfection, I will live on this immense fortune.” Immense it is, dear Jesus. Fiat. Amen.
Bonnie West, Copyright 2025
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