" Now Mary stood outside the tomb weeping. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (John 20:11-16”).
I think there are very few of us who are not feeling the pain of the absence of receiving Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. As a daily communicant for decades, the yearning in my heart is painful, but I am finding at the same time, it is very beautiful.
How can that be , you may ask. Because in some ways I find I am feeling His presence even more deeply.
It is as if He has taken residence in the deep resises of my soul. A place I am sure He has always been, but often with the busyness of life I did not notice. With this new stillness and the silence of isolation I find I am suddenly much more aware of His presence.
It is truly a great gift of grace that this has happened for me. For a good part of my life I have struggled with abandonment. Pregnant as a teen, my father threw me out of the house and disowned me, then used this leverage, no job, no home, no money , no place to go, to coerce me into an abortion. Feeling desperate with no other choice, I unfortunately gave in.
For years after, this abortion not only left me totally broken and separated from God because of the loss of my child, but it also left me with huge abandonment issues and an inability to feel God the Father's love even when I returned to the church.
The mere thought of being abandoned could throw me into the deepest despair and paralyzing fear. It was as if I could never survive and I was fearful of being close to anyone for fear I would be abandoned once again. After all, a father is suppose to protect their child and love them unconditionally, how could I trust anyone when I had never experienced a father's love and no idea what true love was like.
Through good spiritual direction I began to come to know Christ. I learned to also embrace the abandonment in me by praying and inviting Jesus and Mary into this very deep wound. I asked them to embrace it, to love it and yes, to even be grateful for it in me. It was a hard prayer to say and many times in the midst of the spiritual attacks that were so much a part of my life, I would often think I would never make it through, but little by little things changed. I would learn over time to "know" what His love was, even if I could not "feel" it.
This place of excruciating pain slowly evolved. I was given the grace to see through prayer, that the abandonment of Jesus on the cross was experienced by Him so that I would know He knew what it was like to feel this pain. I learned that He was in my abandonment with me. The deeper I went into the wound the more I knew He was present. This place of intense aloneness became the very place of my deepest intimacy with Christ and a place I slowly came to love.
I have found this absence of receiving Jesus in the Eucharist, is not unlike my experience of my wound of abandonment. Of course, I look forward with joyful anticipation to receiving Jesus sacramentally again, but I have found that I am also confirmed in "knowing" His presence within me. They may have taken my Lord away, but they can never take away His life within me.
