Awaken Love: The 2023 Prayer Pledge // Day 18

A good dancer who knows how to lead is art in motion. They have the ability to make even a bad dancer look good, or even a bad dancer feel like they are a good dancer! They can move their partner so subtly—through a gentle touch, a gaze—that the partner willingly follows, trusting their lead. Confident in the other, the partner follows the direction of the lead without even realizing it, just enjoying the process and beauty of the movement. 

Perhaps this is why we love to watch the first dance at a wedding. The couple, each confident in the other’s love, can only gaze at each other. Eyelash to eyelash with someone, there is a great deal of intimacy and vulnerability in that gaze. Yet that is the very meaning of the word reconciliation: to be eyelash to eyelash again. When we have an eyelash to eyelash moment with the Lord, perhaps in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, or Adoration, or in the Word, we are changed. We can’t go back to who we were before: the Lord has entered in and we must respond. 

Pope Benedict XVI wrote in Deus Caritas Est that, “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” We can trace the encounter with the person of Jesus in the lives of the Saints, because their lives begin to take a “decisive direction.” St Gemma encountered Jesus at a young age and set her life on the decisive path of following Him to the end—even to accepting and living the wounds of the Crucifixion in her own body.

Perhaps when we think about reconciliation and repentance, instead of focusing on what we are leaving behind, we can instead see the dance of the Master Who is ever so gently turning us toward Himself and a new horizon. He is bringing us eyelash to eyelash to see His Heart. 

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Closing Prayer // 

Lord, help me to trust your movements more in my life. I give you permission, You know best how to move my heart.  I desire to be “eyelash to eyelash” with You, to face new horizons with You. 

Reflection Questions //

What holds you back from being “eyelash to eyelash” with the Lord? 

Plan a time to encounter Jesus in the Sacrament of Reconciliation or the Eucharist. How does the mindset of an encounter foster my experience with Him?