By Sister Teresa Margaret, O.C.D.
So many times, we can fall into thinking, “Does the Lord hear me? Is He even there?” or, “Sometimes it feels like I am talking to a brick wall!” I have come to learn from being reminded over and over and over again, that words sometimes fall short when I am suffering…nothing that anyone says to me, even if it is the “right thing”, brings comfort…but presence does. There is something about knowing that someone is WITH YOU IN THE SUFFERING that makes it more bearable. And so, when it seems that the Lord is silent when you need Him the most, He may be saying to you, “There is nothing that needs to be said right now…I just want to be with you in it!”
It is in this Presence of Jesus, most tangibly in the Blessed Sacrament, where we learn the true gift of brokenness and restoration…yes, I did say GIFT of brokenness. I am reminded of the scripture of the five loaves and two fishes. I often think of the crowd of 5,000 that felt they had nothing to offer to Jesus, so nothing was brought forth. Maybe it was their shame, their fears, their insecurities, their sins, their past that kept them closed-fisted. And yet, Jesus is not put off by this. He uses it as an opportunity to show all 5,000 sitting there directly before Him, and us, 2,000 years later, sitting before Him in the Blessed Sacrament that brokenness, sinfulness, shame and the like are not things that need to be withheld from Him.
“Now there was much grass in the place; so the men sat down, in number about five thousand. Jesus then took the loaves, and when He had given thanks, He distributed them to those who were seated; so also, the fish, as much as they wanted. And when they had eaten their fill, He told His disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing is wasted’” (John 6: 10-12). Jesus, the Master-Teacher, shows us by example that brokenness can be used to glorify God. “He took bread, blessed it, broke it and said, ‘Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my body which will be given up for you.’” What Jesus did on this grassy hillside is a prefigurement of what He did for all of us when He endured His passion on the cross and instituted the Eucharist in the upper room. ANYTHING, when brought to and placed into the hands of the Father, can be used for good.
Jesus, in distributing the bread and fish, after it had been broken into pieces, is offering an invitation to the crowd…to each of us…to unite our brokenness with His. To place our suffering, our sinfulness, our shame, our insecurities into the baskets when the disciples come around to collect the “fragments” left over and to hear Jesus say to each one of us, “so that NOTHING IS WASTED!” There is nothing in your life that cannot be used for good, that cannot be redeemed, that is too unworthy to be brought to Him. He is not afraid of the stinky fish heads and tails, and breadcrumbs that seem like nothing to everyone else. They are the very sustenance that gives glory to the Father when placed in His hands. Be not afraid! Come before Him open-handed with your “fragments” at Mass or before Him in the Tabernacle, and side-by-side with your Lord truly present in the Eucharist, offer those parts of your heart to Him in total freedom and without shame, knowing that He WANTS to receive them all and allow Him to offer them to the Father with you.
