The voice I find familiar
In the last couple of weeks I have been blessed with the opportunity to pray with different people in different language settings so I want to share with you some of the thoughts based on the experiences I have had.
The journey will be presented in few posts beginning in Tokyo, Japan, and then in Beijing, China.
I arrived there on a Saturday night and I had the chance to attend mass in my own language the Sunday.
It was fascinating, to be in such an exotic place, listening familiar words and this happiness for the great attendance of fellows from all over, including locals who wanted to practice a foreign language. And what a neat organization of the rite. (Well it is Japan after all, of course, it was going to be neat).
But procedures apart, despite nowadays with the mobile you can read the Gospel in your own codes wherever, but it is always a welcoming feeling in which I feel pampered by my beloved God.
I imagine, feel like if He was, open arms and big lighted smile standing by the doors of the modern temple saying:
- Hello my dear, welcome! Welcome to Tokyo!
In my fantasy, He has a grave but soft deep ocean, blue velvet voice. Strong and peaceful. Like if all the security of the world, and the foundational rock of the universe, is in every tone and inflection of it.
He continues:
-Just come in and have a seat. He holds my hands. Looking right into my eyes, heart to Heart, I hear Him saying without words: -The Sacrifice that is about to happen, I will do it again and again, just because I love you, and every one of you guys. For ever and ever, to the end of times and beyond.
That kind of power, in a way, makes me shiver a little with some kind of a strange taste. He loves me! I am glad first, then a questioning. He loves me? So much? But, why? I am just one in billions. And then He make this weird thing He knows how to do, speak into my inner and interrupt my thought, Yes, I love you personally. Let it be. Get over it. And I smile.
Once inside the church, mother Mary by the altar is asking us, with the most pure tender patience, to calm down after the excitement of the outdoors.
Her sweet honey voice fills up the space:
-My little children, please be silent and prepare our hearts to hear The Word, He, Our Lord have to say. And then she goes around benches touching and kissing those ones with grudges in the heart, complaints, bitterness and specially, loneliness.
And me too calm down and do as she ask , even feeling her rose scented fingers caressing the top of my head. She knows how to calm me down.
The mass starts and goes to the perfect end, "Go in peace"
So I go, to a home which was then an empty room, but who or what is empty after a banquet with The Love?
My eyes were ready to explore Tokyo with the awakened eyes both contemplate the beautiful gardens, and the ears to appreciate the loud deafening noise made by the locust, that I identified like a special call.
A call to find something they wanted to show me. Another temple perhaps? Another experience of faith?
A new way of praying?
The home of an ancient congregation?
Another moment of love and so on.
I think that we Catholics, and a good Christian in general, have a natural call to dive deeper in our faith, like detectives have to passionately go around looking for clues in a crime scene.
For us, the ultimate crime, the ultimate passion of all.
The Passion of Christ.