A lot of people these days talk about getting their 15 minutes of fame. Fame in our culture seems to be everything. Most people at some point in their lives have thought about being famous. When I was a little girl, I wanted to be famous too; I wanted to be just like Barbra Streisand in her musicals. What flair! I would dress up in all sort of costumes (even attempting to make big hats with lots of feathers) and sing into a hairbrush microphone. Oh, to be Dolly Levi coming down those steps at the Harmonia Gardens with Louis Armstrong directing the band! If I wasn’t dreaming of being a famous movie star, then it was some other sort of famous person. I even had my hair cut really short when Dorothy Hamill won the Olympic gold medal for figure skating so I could be more like her. What is it inside of us that yearns to be famous? Why the desire to be noticed? Is it God living within us that seeks His own rightful adoration or is it our fallen human nature that seeks to “be gods?” I think deep within us all there is a need to be loved…to be accepted for who we are and loved in spite of it. That’s why we were made after all…made by love to be love. Jesus, in His Sacred Humanity, had this need too. According to the gospels, He WAS famous. Over and over we hear of how His fame spread and how people were astonished and amazed by Him. We hear so many times of the crowds pressing in on Him, of people wanting healing from Him, of the general madness surrounding Him that He once had to get into a boat so He could teach the people. We see, though, in Jesus’ own life how fleeting fame is. Not only did He get booted off the stage, but the crowds yelled out, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” Poor Jesus who only went about doing good and begging for our love. Every time I read the gospels, it doesn’t matter what scene in our Lord’s life that I’m meditating on, I hear Jesus saying the same thing. “Love me. Let me love you. I’m starving for your love. I can heal you. Please love me. I need you.” He hungered for what we all hunger for. It is so remarkable and such a miracle that God descended so far for love of us creatures! And that the victory of His love was made evident on the Holy Cross! Oh, what a marvelous love. It would have been more than enough to simply have won the victory, but He went so far as to institute the Eucharist so He could be with us always. And He still begs for our love. We are privileged to be able to enter into communion with Him every day and experience not 15 minutes of fame, but 15 minutes of Glory!
In his book, Heaven Sense, Fr. Arendzen speaks about how we will see God in heaven through an act of contemplation and love (4-6):
At first, it may seem difficult to realize that our happiness in Heaven can possibly consist in an act of contemplation and love. On earth, the common idea of enjoying oneself consists in some gratification of the senses: a sumptuous banquet, sweet music, healthy exercise, a beautiful landscape; or the company and praise of our fellowmen, the achievement of some great work through the exercise of our brain and skill, the discovery of something fresh and new, the traveling through unknown and sunlit lands. These and a thousand other things flit before the human mind when it imagines supreme happiness, for this happiness is thought of as an endless variety of such things as our own experience on earth suggests. A life of contemplation may seem a pale and attenuated existence, holding little attraction for us. On reflection, however, it becomes more and more evident that the highest and happiest life must be the complete satisfaction of mind and will in the sight and possession of an infinite personal Being.We can enter into the romance of heaven on earth with our communion of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Every day we should be experiencing a quasi-delirium of pure joy when we receive our Lord. When I think of the amazement and love that the Virgin Mary must have experienced at the annunciation when she realized God was within her own body, I must confess, I have to beg for mercy for all of the times I have disregarded the Lord within my own body after Holy Communion. Oh, but Mercy He is full of and we can start fresh, thanks be to God. It is never too late until death to begin to cultivate the knowledge of God, to possess Him, and to love Him with all the love of our being. How sad I feel when people receive communion as if they are receiving mere bread when they are in fact receiving Jesus, the bread of angels…the same Jesus who went about doing good and wanting our love….dying for our love. It is said that the Jesus is really present within us body, blood, soul and divinity for as long as the species remains in our bodies which is about 15 minutes. How can we not want to prostrate ourselves at such a sublime condescension of our God sharing Himself completely with His creatures?! It is astonishing that He chose to remain with us even though He knew most people would take Him for granted, abuse Him, ignore Him, or prefer to go out to eat or watch a movie or talk to friends, when He, our greatest friend, wants to give us Himself entirely. He wants us to possess Him and He wants to possess us in a mutual banquet of intimacy, love, and tenderness. May God grant that we all wake from our stupor and realize what a gift is ours in Jesus, truly present in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar and may we look not to fleeting fame, but to eternal glory that can begin right now on this earth for us if we but only show Him a flicker of real love.
Even on this earth, the greatest known joy is intimacy—that is, knowledge and nearness with another intelligent being. Imagine
a mother, after the Great War, gazing again on the face of her son, and hearing his voice, and then clasping him in her embrace, and holding him as her very own possession, of which the battlefield had almost robbed her! The first moments of their mutual happiness contain a joy so intense that all other so called enjoyments are as nothing in comparison.
Or imagine a husband and a wife who have been parted by strange misfortunes, and after years of separation meet again. As a matter of fact, this theme has ever been elaborated in all human literature, and we may rest assured that it will remain so as long as man lives here below.
No doubt this theme of storytellers, poets, and songsters has been degraded times out of number because of the carnal and sexual element that so often is intruded, or rather, intrudes itself. But nobler minds, at least, can realize that the sensual side of this earthly affection ought not and need not be the dominant factor in true human love, that the knowledge and spiritual possession of one another can be the source of a quasi-delirium of pure joy even on earth.
True, this does not often last long, but at least as long as it lasts, it is supposed to outweigh all other things. Pain, poverty, and distress only provoke a smile, and the very comparison of such joy with other earthly goods is disclaimed as degradation. ‘Strong as death is love,
and many waters cannot quench its fire.’ (Song of Sol. 8:6-7) Given the infinity of God, God must be infinitely beautiful and infinitely lovable. So, far from a pale and extenuated existence, Heaven is the romance, the never-ending love story of the soul and God.
My Lord and love, thank you for sharing yourself so completely with me. So trustingly do you enter into me at Holy Communion that it is as if you were a child looking for someone to take care of you, or a lover who needs a caress, or a Father who has some sound advice to give, or a baby that just needs to be kissed. Sometimes you need someone to bind up your wounds or to encourage your heart and sometimes it is you who cares for me and holds me and makes known to me by your tenderness that I am indeed loved and that all I long for is right within me. You. You are everything. Live in me always! Stay Lord and I will keep you company and notice you when others forget you. Help me though, because I would be the first to forget you if you didn't first give me the grace of your love, but I know you want me to succeed in loving you and so I know you will give me that grace. Thank you for all the graces you give to all of us. Make us faithful to them and to you. Help us all to hear your voice in Holy Communion so that we won’t think of any part of life as separate from you. You are the glue that holds everything together and we can’t possibly live well if you are not put in first place. Lord, I would like to say your name with great love over and over throughout the day with the intention of receiving you well in Holy Communion. Of really loving you and having you be all in me. Help me to do so by letting my guardian angel remind me at least every 15 minutes. Jesus. How sweet a name! May it roll off my lips as a sweet caress to you to console you for every time you are forgotten by souls while you are still present in their bodies! Sometimes when I receive you I don’t know what to say and all I can do is sing, “What wondrous Love is this, oh my soul, oh my soul…” I am so amazed by your gracious love and so grateful for it. You make me cry so much when I think of your goodness to me and your special care for me. Thank you, Lord. I love you. Make my love constant and true and real. Be mine forever because my intimate life with you is bliss. Help us all to know and love you intimately. Amen.
Recommended Reading:
- The Blessed Eucharist by Fr. Michael Müller, C.S.S.R.
- Heaven Sense by Fr. John P. Arendzen
