how i feel at Adoration

rather long, but gorgeous....

+~+~+~+


Union with Christ's Passion

For many years now, O Lord, each day at five o'clock in the afternoon, I have been the client of your blessed cross. A disappointing client. The air which this sluggish character displaces when the moves would not be enough to turn the sails of a windmill. It doesn't matter. He likes to be here, he likes to feel totally dissolved and ignored here, to accept his part of silence and general immobility. Most of the time, nothing happens, at least nothing perceptible. He is happy when, after long repeated periods of watching, he feels deep within himself something as important at the falling of a grain of sand. But is it nothing just purely and simply to exist? Is it nothing just to coexist with that lamp, with that tiny particle of red light which at times diminishes and at other times, abruptly flashes out, as it testifies to God over yonder in the sanctuary?

Passion has become patience. It is you, O Lord, and it is the cross! It is nothing to have for one instant espoused Eternity in the abdication of time, and to participate in the patience of God? Above me, the sad stream of memories, images, and ideas continues its whirling iridescent course. I am somewhere else, below, a little lower down. I am substantially myself where the principal function is purely and simply to continue and to breathe. I look at nothing. I ask for nothing. I am here, and I wait.

It is good to be here.

O Lord, I understand now that it is no slight thing. I don't mean carrying your cross, but simply accompanying it, measuring it with my eyes, at once attracted, astonished, and terrified.

Now, up there where it has flown high, it beckons me.

Paul Claudel