"But only say the word and I shall be healed" Thoughts of a shattered soul.

Especially in this paradoxical age of intellectual progress combined with spiritual regress, there is a heart-breaking dichotomy in society. I should clichely say that I ought to speak for myself here, but it seems that most people, at least the human ones, bar the door to their soul. There is a split between the person we are and the person we allow others to see. We try to appear to be someone even just a little better (whatever "better" may be) then our wretched selves. Sound familiar? Welcome to the human race. I don't have to elaborate. It's a reality cutting through to the core of this banishment called "life." To quote Casting Crowns, we are "happy plastic people under shiny plastic steeples, with walls around our weakness and smiles to hide out pain."

Coupled with the pain of this falsity, there is that incessant longing within our hearts: that seemingly infinite emptiness that lies within the deepest abyss of every soul. No matter how beautiful the sunset, how touching the smile of a child, or how marvelous the embrace, there is always the possibility of more. There is something about a gazing into a sunset that leaves one feeling so vulnerable, looking beyond. What makes it so healing to walk alone on a stormy night with rain soaking one's skin and wind whipping to the marrow of one's bones? It is those times that are most beautiful that the possibility of more shines most brightly. In his sermon titled "The Weight of Glory," C.S. Lewis calls this longing an, "inconsolable secret within each of us: a secret which can neither be told nor be kept silent." We are discontent foreigners in a strange land who bear broken hearts and shattered souls.

In order to break down this seemingly inescapable dichotomy within society, families, and the heart of the human person, reception of Communion must do at least this: it must make known our real selves, at least to the God we receive. Just prior to receiving the Blessed Sacrament, the faithful recite the words, "Lord I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed." In receiving communion, we are allowing Christ, through the Blessed Sacrament, to literally enter within the very persons He created. He touches the center of our being. Through Communion, we allow Christ to know us, gracing us with a small sharing the clarity we will find in Heaven.

Alright, enough talk. Pontificating ad naseum is not what this blog is for, and it is time for the habituated college student to shut-up and the lost teenager to resume her ramblings. This post finds its origins in a spiritually-tied-in-knots college student who has too much time and freedom to think over Christmas break. It may not be theologically correct and might go overboard on the poorly-written flowery imagery, but what I tried to explain here is the one thing I hold onto. Through reception of the Blessed Sacrament, even the smallest wound within us may "be healed," allowing us to lose ourselves through Communion and become known: to become one in, with, and through Christ.

Photo taken by the lovely Mary Swinford

What the entire world cannot contain, love imprisons here.