Lectio
“The dead are silent because they live, just as we chatter so loudly to try to make ourselves forget that we are dying. Their silence is really their call to me, the assurance of their immortal love for me.”
— Fr. Karl Rahner, SJ, Encounters With Silence
Meditatio
I think of you often, my dear old friend. Not when I expect it, but as a pleasant, yet sorrowful gift. Your memory comes to me by surprise, rising up in my heart in moments of joy that I long to share with someone who understands.
When I meet with my Jesuit spiritual director. When I discover a biography on Thomas Merton or a new, old book by or about a saint I think you will like. When I attend my first Mass in years. When the incense hits my nose, the prayers hit my ears, and the Eucharist hits my heart. When I write about my spiritual experiences, my spiritual struggles, and my spiritual revelations. When I have an idea for a book. When I am called to convert — a seed your presence planted so many years ago.
When I want to share these experiences with someone, you are the someone I think of.
For a brief moment, my heart is lifted up when I think of you, only to fall into sadness when I realize you are gone. But I embrace both of these experiences — their grace, their beauty, the way they open my heart to receive he who loved you into my life and who loved you back into his to wait for me. To pray for me. To pray with me.
Your devotion, your faithfulness, and your dedication to the church, the faith, and the fellowship you served until your last day. I see it now in a way I was unable to see it then. Because devotion does not boast. Faithfulness does not announce itself. Service does not ask for credit. I see it now. I see you now.
Thank you, my friend. Thank you for seeing me, for believing in me, and for your unwavering friendship toward me. Thank you for my first Mass, for so many morning coffees and Sunday dinners, and for sharing with me the grace and beauty of the Perpetual Adoration Chapel. Thank you for being my friend and for saying and showing me that I was yours. Thank you for changing my life — then, now, and forever.
Oratio
I open my mouth
to say your name
but my words
turn to silence
the rising and falling
of hope
as my inhale
becomes a gasp
remembering
you
are
gone
my exhale
a prayer
to you
Contemplatio
Who in your life has loved you into faith — and what does their memory ask of you now?
Related Scripture
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” — Romans 8:38–39 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like The Collage of Heaven: How God Speaks Through Every Unique Life, which explores how God speaks to and through each person in ways that are irreplaceably their own — a lens that illuminates what it means to receive someone as a particular word of God spoken into your life.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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