Despite my desire to live every moment of every day “plugged into” God and the life of grace, I had spent a great deal of time bumbling through thick clouds of confusion and transition.
I gave countless testimonies and talks about the Lord’s faithfulness, but words do not always shine light on the darkness. I yearned to feel Our Savior’s presence once again. Fasting, prayer, frequenting Confession and Communion, Rosaries, Divine Mercy Chaplets . . . none of these things provided consolation.
Grief and quiet desolation became the new normal even though God blessed my desires again and again, there were no big answers.
One day I attended Mass on the feast of Saint Lawrence. More and more scientists, doctors, and even psychologists tell us both of the importance of humor as well as the value of meditation and prayer in daily life. Saint Lawrence, deacon and martyr, was a model of all these things. Tradition relates that he told his persecutors who were burning him alive, “Turn me over, I am done on this side!”
During the Mass, I had the sense that Saint Lawrence was going to intercede for me. I decided to ask him for many things, as I would ask a father, brother, or friend. I have never experienced the Communion of Saints as I did that day. I not only received clear answers to prayers, big and small, but I also received an inner healing that I can only describe as miraculous.
Sisters, I am not sharing this with you to impress you with the details of my prayer life. As I shared, at the time this happened my prayer life had been very meager and unsatisfying. Rather, I am sharing this with you because I firmly believe all the Saints want to be family to us.
The story of Saint Lawrence, like all of the Saints, pulsates with profound truth. This everlasting truth echoes in our readings today. The divine, cosmic logic revealed in Jesus Christ and given to the Church leads us to cheerfulness, a life of abundance, and defeats death. The Saints want to encourage. They want to teach us how to live in communion with God. This heavenly reality is more real than anything we can see naturally.
Let us pray that all of us will live in this certainty in our everyday lives and thereby touch Heaven with our eyes wide open. Saint Lawrence, pray for us.
Sister Maria Kim Bui is a Daughter of Saint Paul, women religious dedicated to evangelization in and through the media. She is originally from Tempe, AZ, spent most of her fourteen years in religious life in the northeast, some time in Texas, and now was recently asked to serve as the director of marketing and sales at the Sisters' publishing house in Boston. Find out more about her here. She is the author of our Blessed Conversations Mystery: Belong found here.
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