“And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves”
Last Friday, a woman made her way to our Adoration chapel with two family members. She was in a condition of great fear. Frozen in fear. She did not want to leave the tabernacle. She clung to it with a crucifix in one hand and begged me to place holy water on her. My heart cried for her. You see I knew her pain as I had been in a similar condition many years ago. It’s a state of deep repentance. As I was describing this poor woman to another person, I was quickly reminded this week of our Lord in the temple, flipping over the money changers tables. The body is the Temple. When the “world” sees a soul in this state, they call it mental illness but never even think of the sickness of the soul. Confession! Anointing of the Sick! THEN take them to a mental care facility, arming them with a book of prayers for the duration. When the soul is sick, everything in the body is sick. There is no pill you can take or that can be created by man to cure a sick soul. Only our Lord is the Doctor of your soul. If you allow Him to fix your soul, your entire life blossoms into great beauty!
You see, our Lord did this to me. My soul has always belonged to Him as do all of ours baptized in the faith. I had made His “Temple” a den of thieves by living a sinful life and falling away from His teachings. He came in to His “Temple” and removed everything He did not place in there, everything that did not belong there. When this happened, I too was in a state of dread and fear, frozen in fear because it is Him, allowing the soul to be “Sifted as Wheat”. Every sin I had ever committed was being tossed into the dumpster as I stood by it repenting as it was thrown in, feeling like a “hoarder” watching everything I had, my sinful posessions and passions, which was in fact worthless garbage, being tossed away. There was nothing else I could do but repent. I was guilty of everything. A disconnect comes when we do not understand this is for the greater good of our soul and we think that Christ want’s us to just stand there and not move as this is taking place. Or that He hates us and is punishing us. Dead wrong! It is very incorrect to think this way. God never wishes you to be frozen in fear. He needs you to trust in Him and continue moving closer to Him with the understanding He is everywhere you are to complete His will. If we remain frozen in fear, afraid to move, we miss out the beauty of his consolations through all life, that He is trying to replace all the death that He removed from your soul that you had built up separated from Him.
No table of junk is left unturned. But know this. Everything that is removed is replaced with great joy and love that explodes into a satisfaction of knowing He is God and He is with you but it takes lots of prayer to work through this along with using all the grace and gifts He gives to you. Leaning and trusting completely on Him as the Builder, turning the tables on living the sinful life and bringing you into “communion” with Him, in a life of prayer.
Our recompence is in Christ’s hands and when we submit, we are then crucified with Him.
Edit to add on 3/30/2013
Hosea 5:15b-16:2
Thus says the Lord:
In their affliction, they shall look for me:
“Come let us return to the Lord,
For it is he who has rent, but he will heal us;
he has struck us, but he will bind our wounds.
He will revive us after two days;
on the third day he will raise us up,
to live in his presence.”