Behold, for peace I had great bitterness: but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back. Isaiah 38: 17
An Emmaus Experience
Yet I trod that quite familiar pathway
Leading up to Emmaus!
With the bitter, gnawing pain
I trod, with an earnest longing.
Threescore furlongs or seven miles …,
That’s the distance from Jerusalem to Emmaus,
Emmaus, the town of ‘Hot Springs’!!
That was where I needed to be broken,
Only to rise up again, with a burning heart!
The Third One who always walks beside me,
The hooded invisible Presence
Was very much present with me that day.
Maya Angelou’s words kept ringing ,
“You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise”
Those words of resilience
Quickened my very heart.
The usual smile of welcome,
And a few minutes of sacred silence,
Watching , waiting, and adoring
The visible Presence in the Blessed Sacrament,
Had rested my spirit.
Then I heard a brother singing
A song of gratitude… for rejection, suffering,
And for the prompt Word in times of anguish!
Another prophetic voice from the left
Read from a bound Xeroxed copy
Of Louis Evely’s ‘Suffering’,
And in succinct words spoke of the mystical Love
Of our Heavenly Father in allowing Pain,
Of the Creator asking “pardon” to the creature!
Like Cleopas, I felt my inner eyes slowly opening
To the unfathomable Mystery of Christ.
Then when the group gathered for prayer,
I sat in silence, unable to open my mouth,
'Coz, for me,'spontaneous prayer' is now a long-forgotten art!
But a phrase from the Bible verse that was read,
Romans 13: 12, still burns within me
“Put on the armour of Light” .
That’s my Christ within me
Beckoning me,
To go back to Jerusalem……..
O Jerusalem!!!
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