Are there days when the problems and the pain are so great you just “check out”? Maybe you go through the motions, even with a smile on your face, but inside you are numb? Perhaps you think, “I don’t want to be (a mother, a doctor, a nurse,  a teacher…) anymore. I could walk out on my job or my family or my friends today and not feel anything…. I’ll stay because I care, but I just don’t have anything left in me to give.”

 These moments, if we’re honest, have probably come to all of us. Today’s Feast of Corpus Christi, with all of its solemnity, honors Jesus who looks at us with tenderness and compassion. It is thus about our very human experiences. It’s in our personal quandaries that we can feel Jesus even closer, gently whispering, “There’s goodness here, my friend, but you have to look for it. Listen to My story, eat My Food, love Me for who I am, and you will reclaim and find beauty in your life again.”

How, might you ask, are we to regain the eyes to see Jesus in our everyday lives if we feel the darkness has covered over the light of hope? The answer is through a “kiss from God.”  The image is Ronald Rolheiser’s in his book Our One Great Act of Fidelity. Speaking about the Eucharist, he writes, “On the night before his death, having exhausted what he could do with words, Jesus went beyond them. He gave us the Eucharist, his physical embrace, his kiss, a ritual within which he holds us to his heart.”

So when you are numb, for whatever reason, go to Jesus and receive him in the Eucharist as  frequently as you can.

   Seeking him. And then serving others.
      Receiving him. And then giving to others.
         Resting in him. And then doing for others.
            And Life, even if ever so slowly, will flow back into your heart.

 Sr. Ann Heady, FSP