SANDALS AND MOSAICS

A close friend asked me to write a note to her sister, a firm believer who is fighting a losing battle with cancer, and has been wondering how we can be sure that God really is present in the midst of our sufferings. Since I've been praying hard for her for months, I felt that the Lord might offer me a few words of comfort to her. Here is what I wrote to my friend's sister a couple of days ago:.

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Dear_________________,

Here are a couple of thoughts that might be helpful to you right now.

If you look at the Book of Exodus chapter 3, the story of Moses and the burning bush, you will see in verse 5 that Moses is told. “Take off your sandals, for you are on holy ground!“ This is because he is in the presence of the Mystery of the Divine, namely, God. So he has to take his sandals off out of reverence for the mysterious presence that he will never be able to comprehend or understand. God is just too big for our intellects.

So when you or I are standing in the presence of some terrible suffering or some awful evil or some tragedy, the first thing we must do is take off our shoes! We are in the presence of a deep mystery that we cannot comprehend. That means that we cannot really “know” for sure if God is really here in the midst of all this suffering. All we have is the gift of faith.

Today is the feast day of Saint Augustine. He once wrote that our

life is like a beautiful mosaic. But the problem is that we only get to look at the mosaic from very close up. We see only one or two little pieces of the mosaic, and therefore it makes no sense to us. But when the Lord calls us home to heaven, we get to look at the entire mosaic. Then we can finally see that the whole picture is so unbelievably beautiful and full of love that it takes our breath away.

But the way things are in this life, we don’t get to see the whole thing.

Yet if you listen hard, you can hear the Lord apologizing to you. “I’m sorry. I wish you could see the whole picture right now, but in order for you to do that, you would have to be God. So, I’m sorry. I apologize. But for right now, please try to trust me. Look for all those bits of love that I reveal to you every day. That’s the best I can do.”

There. That’s at least my way of looking at things.

I hope this was of some help.

Love and prayers,

Fr. Albert

No Shoes, Please

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