Forgiveness

Posted on December 9, 2013 by veilofveronica

”If a man finds it very hard to forgive injuries, let him look at a Crucifix, and think that Christ shed all His Blood for him, and not only forgave His enemies, but even prayed His Heavenly Father to forgive them also. Let him remember that when he says the Pater Noster, every day, instead of asking pardon for his sins, he is calling down vengeance on himself.”
–Saint Philip Neri

As I look around at the world today, and all of the turmoil that is taking place, I can’t help but think what we need greatly in this world is forgiveness.  I would venture to say that almost all of the world’s issues boil down to someone feeling offended, and the lack of forgiveness toward those who offend them.  Forgiveness is born of true love.  True love is hard.  It is all great and wonderful to SAY, love one another, it is a whole other thing to implement it.

Sometimes, when a great offense is committed, because we are hurt, we build up a wall, we shut the other person out, the relationship is broken.  I have had people say slanderous things about me before, things that were just absolutely not true, and affected my everyday life greatly.  I have experienced family members abandon other family members.  The hurt that is born out of these types of offenses is deep.  I too, have offended and hurt others in a way that I should not have.  I had to learn to say I am sorry.  It is especially hard though if the party who offends you never says, “I’m sorry.”  I have experienced feelings of great anger and anguish.  It affected my mood toward others who were in no way involved.  Anger builds.  It can, if left unchecked, build into wrath, and your heart can feel poisoned.  In some particular circumstances, I struggled with this greatly.  How do you forgive the person who hasn’t asked for it, or doesn’t seemingly care that they hurt you?

I sat in church one day and the Gospel was Matthew 18:23-35:

“That is why the kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who decided to settle accounts with his servants.  When he began the accounting, a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount.  Since he had no way of paying it back, his master ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, his children, and all his property, in payment of the debt. At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.  ‘Moved with compassion the master of that servant let him go and forgave him the loan.  When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount.  He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, ‘Pay back what you owe. Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back. ‘But he ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ But he refused.  Instead, he had him put in prison until he paid back the debt. Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master and reported the whole affair.   His master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to.   Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?’  Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt.   So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart.”

During the homily the Priest said, “so if God forgives you everything, do you really want to leave this life with your hand around someone else’s throat?”  That jarred me.  This is what I was doing by holding onto the anger.  I was holding my hand around someone else’s throat, when God had forgiven me everything.  I decided to forgive.  In some cases this is an actual statement I made to others, forgiving with words and with heart.  In others, since some of the hurts were long ago, and the people long gone, I forgave them in heart.  I let the anger go.  I prayed for them.  My heart felt much better on the inside.

I have had people who do not want to forgive me.  I cannot force them too.  But I can forgive myself.  No longer would I beat myself up over a situation.  I make reparation and I go to confession.  God didn’t beat me up so I shouldn’t do it to myself either.  I also realized that being human, our friends, our family, strangers even, will offend us.  This means we have to constantly be ready to forgive.  I am not talking either about letting people walk on you or enabling other people’s bad behaviors, which is harmful, but finding a place where you walk in joy with the Lord, regardless of circumstances around you.  My friend and neighbor, Mitzi, told me, “be soft on the outside, but hard on the inside.”  This struck me.  Most people, once offended, are so hurt or soft on the inside, they become hard on the outside.  They put up a wall so then there is no real intimate relationship with anyone, just a superficial one.  They are trying to protect themselves from being offended or hurt again.  But this can leave you isolated, lonely, lacking in the one thing we need, love.  But if you are soft on the outside, this means you make yourself vulnerable to being hurt.  And to be hard on the inside means, you are strong enough to forgive that hurt. Some people will perpetually hurt you, and you do not have to allow the close relationship with them, but we are compelled to forgive them 70 times 7.  I realize now though, most who love us do not intend to hurt us, and are truly sorry, so be hard on the inside, strong on the inside and forgive them and then let the joy and peace of the Lord Jesus encompass you.  Let the anger go and let the love in.  For me, this means forgiving even a murderer, and praying for his soul.

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True Love

Posted on November 27, 2013 by veilofveronica

“Pure love … knows that only one thing is needed to please God: to do even the smallest things out of great love – love, and always love.” (140)
–Divine Mercy in My Soul, St. Faustina

In this transformation that I was undergoing, I started to think about what it was that God really wants from us.  The answer is always love.  The bible tells us over and over to love.  And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Luke 10:27.  “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13

This seems easy enough, right?  Just love people.  But do we really?  The answer to that for me was no.  I began to read more about it and the English language only has one word for Love, but the Ancient Greeks, they had many different words for love.  The first was “Philia” and this is a dispassionate virtuous love, like the love between family, brotherly love.  It is a mental kind of love.  In Philia there is a give and a take between people.  The second is “Eros” this is physical passionate love, romantic  love, pure emotional love.  I believe this is what our society focuses so much on.  This is based on a feeling that almost always goes away.  But the final Greek word I will mention about love is, “Agape”.  This refers to love in the spiritual sense.  It is true unconditional love.  This is love that gives and never expects anything in return.  It is willing the good of the other for their own sake and expecting nothing in return.  That, right there, that is a hard kind of love.  That is the kind of love God gives us and the kind of love we desperately need from one another.

You see, I was discovering that love isn’t an emotion (or just singularly an emotion) it was a choice that you make.  I have seen and felt Agape.  It isn’t as rare as you would think, but neither is it everywhere.  Every exhausted mother who made a choice to get up in the middle of the night for her crying baby, that was Agape.  Every child who has taken care of an elderly parent and nurtured them in their old age, that is Agape.  Every spouse, who when the sickness comes, takes care of her and works and takes care of the children, that is Agape.  That is a choice to do what we ought to do.

I thought of my own life.  I have experienced the Agape with my children.  How was I with my spouse?  I seemed to always want something in return from him.  I want you to do this for me, do that for me, nag, nag, nag.  I decided it was time to build him up, for his own sake.  I decided to focus on all the things he does well and to thank him for those things.  How was I with anyone really?  Did I will the good of my friends for their own sake, or did I get jealous when something went well for them?  So much of our vocabulary focuses on what I want.  I want. I want. I want.  And the wanting never ends.  We get the thing we want, and still we are not satisfied.  Again, I made a choice.  Maybe I should stop wanting, and start loving, truly loving.  I would make an effort to perform some small kindness that was within my means for others.  It was amazing how, in those times, when I choose to do this, choose to be happy for others, and perform some kindness, how much better my life got.  Though I sought nothing in return, what I got in return was abounding kindness from others who responded to me that way.  This included my marriage.

I should point out though that sometimes Agape love is hard.  Sometimes it requires a boundary, or a word, of concern, where it is needed.  Agape applies to you as well.  Love yourself as God loves you.  That means taking care of you.

Agape is especially hard if you don’t like someone or you disagree with their views.  I struggle greatly here.  But we are called to this.  Without  Agape we dehumanize people.  We see them as less than ourselves.  We choose to put them down, call them names, because they don’t conform to our view of things.  If we choose to love people the way we are meant to, we must look through the eyes of love as God does, and treat all people with dignity and respect.  We don’t treat people like they are a burden, but a gift. Imagine a world of Agape.  It starts with each of us, one at a time.

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Tackling Vices

Posted on November 22, 2013 by veilofveronica

In the time since my heart was melted and transformed the thing I struggle with the most is the practicality of the day and the world we live in.  Applying what was revealed to me to my everyday life.  I know God loves me, and I now know how to pray.  What still scares me and is hard is what He asks me to do.  He showed me I needed to change.  This made me want to tackle my vices.   I won’t go into all of them here because they are mine to battle, but I will mention one.  I mention this one because it is part of the bigger picture.  If I am to transform into a person who spreads the love of God, then I have to start somewhere.  So my vice that I will reveal, and if you know me well needs no revealing, is cursing and saying God’s name as a curse.  I grew up in the North East and cursing doesn’t make anyone blink where I am from.  It is part of the colloquial language up there.  When I moved South, I noticed people here did not do this as much.  They speak in slower softer tones, and the curse is not used often.  It was refreshing.  When I began to examine my conscience, I thought, what do I put out there?  Is there poison coming out of my mouth?   I thought of cursing and using God’s name, in particular, as a curse.  I thought, this needs to stop.   When the veil has been lifted, and you start to see clearly the world as God sees it, it hurts your heart to know what you have partaken in, even in the things that society perceives as no big deal.  As I began to read the bible more and more, this kept popping up.  Ephesians 4:29 tells us; “No foul language should come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for needed edification, that it may impart grace to those who hear.” and Sirach 28:13 tells us; “Let not your mouth form the habit of swearing, or becoming too familiar with the Holy Name.” And most important, God in His 10 Commandments told us not to do this.  “You shall not take the name of the LORD, your God, in vain. For the LORD will not leave unpunished him who takes his name in vain.” Exodus 20:7

I was truly sorry for these things.  But I was also scared to change them.  I can tell a wickedly funny story (at least in my own mind), and a few curse words thrown in here and there, well they seem make it funnier.  What would my friends think of me?  Would they still think that I am funny?  Our society thinks nothing of these words, nothing of using God’s name as a curse.  I would be different if I stopped. But God wants me to be different.  He wants me to belong to Him.

So goes my journey.  It is a journey because, though in a moment I was changed, it takes longer than a moment to change ingrained behavior.  I still curse.  I am working on it.  I no longer use God’s name as a curse though.  So, my transformation makes headway, but is not complete.  This is also not to say that I judge others who do this, but to say, I don’t want to use the name of my friend as a curse.  If someone drove their car and got cut off and yelled “Susan Skinner! get out of my way you!” that would hurt me personally, so no more will I use Jesus’ name that way.  If you are good friends with me, you know I am still working on the other kind of cursing. Each day I ask God for the grace to help me stop.

Many of you may think this is a strange post, and perhaps it is, but what God wants for us is SO much better than what we want for us so I am trying my best, with His help, to obey Him.  When I slip up, I ask forgiveness.  If it is a particularly hard day, I ask forgiveness a lot.  Guess what?  He always gives it.

As I said above, I have many other vices.  I am working on all of them.  This is the one I feel comfortable speaking about.  If I stop cursing, will the world be saved?  No, but I will no longer be spreading poison and darkness about, and that, well, it makes the world a little bit better.

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The Peaceful Place

Posted on November 15, 2013 by veilofveronica

“Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.” Romans 2:12

In the weeks and months following Veronica’s murder, in the midst of my agony and crying, as I explained in my first post, I felt called to assess my life.  I started my assessment with how I had always approached God.  I think I approached God the way many people probably do.  I knew God was good.  I knew God loved me.  But I wanted to know why He always seemed so far away.  Was He just this guy up in the sky that allowed awful things to happen to us and stood back from us until the day we died?

It occurred to me that the only time I actually spent getting to know God was usually when I was wanting, begging or pleading for something from Him.  I prayed the prayers in church in Sunday at Mass, and if I needed something I asked.  Please God, make these children go to sleep on time.  Please God, help me get skinnier.  Please God let me have enough money to get new hardwood floors.  Occasionally, there was the begging.  Make this pain stop, I cannot bear it.

I thought what kind of relationship is that?  If I had a friend and all they ever did was call me to ask for something but never spent any true time with me, I would be irritated.  My relationship with God was so self-centered.  It was all about me.  No wonder I didn’t hear Him talking to me. No wonder He seemed so far away.  I was too busy thinking all about myself.  I had a smart-phone, a TV, kids & a husband to keep me busy. I didn’t need to talk to God because I was busy with life.  There was no quiet.  There was no calm.

I decided I needed peace.  The ache in my heart that caused the begging this time, caused me to cry alone.  Without all the noise I could hear God.  “Build a place to talk to me Susan.  You can feel me if you listen quietly.”  In the corner of our bedroom is a space, a space, where I never knew what to do.  I had tried the treadmill there, but didn’t use it. Then, I tried a love seat.  It just collected clothes.  I looked at the useless corner.  I will build a peaceful place.  I will build a place where I can talk to you.

I think my husband thought I was a lunatic.  In between nights of crying and wailing, I was putting up partition walls, curtains and collecting religious items.  Thankfully for me, my husband remained silent, and just watched.  It took me a week or two and I had it assembled.  It looked like a chapel in the corner of my room.  I didn’t care.  In there I could pray, be silent, find peace.  I lit my candles and prayed.

Soon enough 3 little people were intrigued with the small private space in the corner of the room.  They wanted to come into the “Peaceful Place” as it has come to be known. So I let them.  My husband came in too.  Suddenly we were praying together as a family.  My heart began to heal.  My conversations with God changed from, what will you do for me Lord? To what can I do for you Lord?  What is your will?  Slowly but surely years of panic attacks stopped.

God was becoming my friend.  He was no longer someone who gave out rules to suck the fun out of life.  He was unconditionally loving me, healing me, and freeing me.  He was freeing me from anxiety and panic attacks that had plagued me.  He was freeing me from materialism.  I realized no matter what my weight was, He loved me.   I wanted and longed for my will to conform to His.  When I actively seek this, it can be turmoil outside, but my inside remains at peace.

He is transforming my heart.  My heart wants to obey Him, to keep His Holy Day.  I want to go to Mass instead of feeling obligated to.  He has gifts there that are free for me. They free me from the pains of this life.  I am getting so much more, but was only able to realize this when I put the focus on Him instead of myself.  I still would like hardwood floors, and I would still like to be skinny, but I know those are not the important things in life. I can live and live well without that because God is so much more.

I still have a long way to go in my journey.  I find on some days I have to will myself to pray. I have to decide that it is a priority.  I have to choose it.  In the days since the healing began, I can start to drift back to old habits. These are habits where I do not make God a priority.  When I do this, the anxiety creeps back in.  So I make a concerted effort to stay changed.  I am a sinner.  But I am a sinner who knows God as a friend, knows that He loves me.  I know that to keep my friend I have to be a friend that listens as much as I talk. And so everyday I wake up and look in the corner where I built a chapel, and I know where my priority lies.

My chapel Peaceful Place

My Peaceful Place.  The first picture is from the outside.  The second picture is the inside.

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“Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love.”
― St. Thérèse de Lisieux

Life can be unkind. I have had my share of sufferings, as I am sure most people have. If we are not careful we can let a bitterness seep in.

I know bitterness, the lack of trust, looking at the world with cynicism. Part of my sufferings had done this to me. They made me look at the world through hurt. When we are not careful, this bitterness can seep into everything. Your husband leaves his laundry on the floor. You perceive he doesn’t respect you, or want to help you. Bitter. Your kids say, “momma” every five seconds pulling you in all directions. You are unappreciated. Bitter. Your friend gets an awesome new car. Of course she did, you’ll never get anything new. Bitter.

I found myself getting stuck there too often. When my friend was murdered, most people would say that should make you even more bitter. But for me that was the turning point. I can’t control others, but with God’s help I can control my reaction. I started to recall some of the great stories of people I had read or heard about. What made them great? What made them different? They were thankful. They were thankful, even when it was hard.

One story that always stuck in my mind was the story of Corrie ten Boom, in THE HIDING PLACE. Corrie and her sister, Betsy, were in a German Nazi Concentration Camp. Their barrack was flea infested. They had managed to smuggle a bible in. Her sister decided they needed to be thankful. Her sister insisted that they Thank God for the fleas, Corrie is opposed, but at the urging of her sister gives in and offers up a prayer thanking God for the fleas. Over the next few months the women in the barracks began to notice that the guards never entered their barracks. This not only allowed the women to have bible studies in their concentration camp, but it spared them from being raped and assaulted. Only toward the end do you discover that the guards did not enter the barracks because of the fleas. Thankful for the fleas. What a thought.

I looked around my nice home, at all the things that made me bitter; the dishes in the sink; the endless laundry. I thought of what those things meant. They meant that my home was full. It was full of people who loved me. Who shared meals with me. Who played in the dirt and laughed. Why was I so angry at those things? I had forgotten how to be thankful. Thankful, even when it was hard, even in the tedium. I made a decision. I decided to focus on the things that I loved, instead of the things that bothered me. That husband who left his laundry on the floor everyday, well he got up went to work, and provided for his family. He hugs me when I cry. Those children, well, I couldn’t imagine a silent house without the word, “momma”. What a blessing they are. That friend, in the new car, cried with you when your friend was murdered, and she will drive you anywhere you need to go in that new car.

I started to see that suffering was not the worst thing in the world that could happen to me. We spend hours trying to avoid suffering and to no avail, because it always catches us. I believe the worst thing that could happen would be for me to be sinful and mean. We should spend hours trying to love others, rather than tear them down. When I am bitter, I become selfish, I snap at people. I hurt the ones I love.

I thought of Jesus. He loves completely. So much that He gave His life for us. In the Catholic Church, He left us Himself in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. His Body, Blood, Soul & Divinity, right here on earth for us to receive heaven on earth from Him. We receive His ultimate sacrifice, the Gift of Himself. It is no coincidence that Eucharist means, Thanksgiving. Being thankful makes us spread joy and love. I am nowhere near where I need to be, but my eyes have been opened. I choose Thanksgiving. I choose Love.

Posted on November 12, 2013 by veilofveronica | 8 Comments

Wiping the Face of Jesus

Posted on November 4, 2013 by veilofveronica

Domenico_Fetti_-_The_Veil_of_Veronica

Hello, this is my very first blog ever.  To say I am scared to write down my thoughts would be an understatement.  But a friend who I really hadn’t spoken to in years advised me to write, so here I am putting it out there for you to read.

I have actually thought about writing a lot.  I named my first blog post, “Wiping the Face of Jesus,” and my site, “Veil of Veronica” and many of you may think those are strange names, so for my first blog I will explain my choice of blog names.

If you know me at all you know that I am Catholic.  I identify myself as this above all things.  It is who I am,  a believer in Jesus Christ and a member of the Catholic Church.  If you have known me a long time, you already knew this about me.  I have grown up going to church, attended Catholic schools, and generally been involved in Church activities or teaching in some way shape or form all of my life.  In 2010 though, I had an awakening, a conversion within a conversion, if you will.  If you knew me before then, you would have said, she is a good Christian girl.  I was going through the motions doing what was asked.  But, looking back now, I was missing so much.

You see, I had a friend, and her name was Veronica.  Veronica was sweet and beautiful and genuinely a kind person.  My son was her son’s best friend.  We were not the best of friends but we were friends that genuinely liked each other and we were mother’s who loved our children, and who hung out together because our boys brought us together.  On August 28, 2010, Veronica called me and asked if my son could spend the night at her house.  Though I had allowed him to dozens of times before, that night for some reason, I was uneasy.  I told her no, but that he could come over and play for the afternoon and that I would pick him up before dinner.  Around 4 o’clock I drove out to her house to pick him up.  I stood in Veronica’s kitchen area and we chatted about our boys.  She told me how each of them had a gift and what special children they were.  She had taken them to the grocery store to buy their favorite ice cream to eat.  My son also wanted cereal which she generously bought for him and gave me to take home for him.  I thanked her and I drove away.

The next morning she was murdered. Right there where I stood talking to her.  Her soon to be ex-husband had hired a hit man to murder her because they were separated and really who knows why else.  I felt like I got punched in the stomach.  I couldn’t breathe.  I couldn’t stop crying.

In my agony, I laid on my bedroom floor crying, wailing really.  Here was a beautiful young mother, 39 years old murdered, leaving her 8 year old son motherless.  And for what?  I cried out to God in anguish and anger.  How could you let this happen?   Why Lord?

In the midst of my anguish, a thought came over me. God said,  “I don’t want this, people choose this.”  I asked God, “what, what in the world can I do, in this awful place?”  He answered me.  He said, “Susan, good in the world starts with you.”  I began to think.  I thought about how I had seen Veronica and her husband in church together and I wondered, how can a person who would murder sit in church?  God answered me again.  He told me that her husband did not start out a murderer, but that his sin had grown in his heart and gone unchecked, and had lead down a long dark path.  I remembered the bible verse that stated, “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”( Matthew 5:28)  That was the moment that verse made sense to me.  I never had understood it.  I had always thought, “how can a thought be a sin?”  But after her murder it made sense to me.  Sin starts in your heart and takes over until you act on it with your hands.  And if we never take the time to examine our conscience, or think about what is right and what is wrong, well then, we can really go down a wrong path.

So Lord, “what can I do?”  He told me that the only person I could control was myself.  That I can choose to love and spread that love outward.  For me this meant examining my own conscience and trying to become a better person.  Did I love my enemy?  or even my neighbor, for that matter?  The answer was a resounding, NO.  Oh my, I thought, I have not always spread love and left people better off for knowing me.  In the Catholic Church, we have confession, where we go to a Priest and confess our sins.  I had always disliked this Sacrament and dreaded going.  But here, in this place, crying on the ground, I found it to be a gift.  A gift I was grateful for.  In telling my sins, I was able to encounter Christ.  I had a confession like I had never had before.  In this Sacrament, I received the grace that Jesus offers to us when we choose to ask for it.  I took a good hard look at myself and my selfishness started to burn away because of the love I encountered in confessing.  The Sacrament makes me try to do better, and though I know that I am a sinner and will continue to have failures, I can receive His sanctifying grace and forgiveness when I go. This helps me to spread His goodness forward.  I don’t think you have to be Catholic to understand this.  Her murder was not my fault, but I would not let her murder be in vain, I would not let her life be snuffed out without letting others know the impact it had on me, and that good could come out of the ashes of such awful circumstances.  Thus my journey toward being truly Christian began.

I thought of Veronica.  In Catholicism while Jesus is in His Passion, walking His way to Golgotha, bloodied and beaten, He comes across a woman named Veronica.  Veronica wipes the face of Jesus.  A small kindness.  This man, this God man, was bloodied, beaten, tired, in agony, and this women, Veronica, provided a brief respite, if you will.  A few seconds where the sweat and blood were wiped away, and for a moment, however brief, He felt love from this woman.  It did not stop His Passion, His suffering, but in a world that was mocking Him, scourging Him, that woman’s touch with the cloth must have felt glorious.   So He imprinted His image on her cloth.  Veronica, means “True Image”.  He left her the mark of His love.  And so because of my friend, Veronica, who also had provided me love and respite during a tough time in my life, I must spread love and kindness where ever I go.  I cannot stop suffering, but I can offer that respite to those who are lost, poor, lonely, unwanted, or unloved.  And so for me, I will wipe the Face of Jesus, as long as His grace and mercy allows me to.

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