Ask, and God will wrap your heart in Love

By Mary Regina Morrell

"Yet, over and over I find people who are living witnesses of this mystery -- that by opening their heart to pain, they also opened it to love, and, so, found incredible peace." Antoinette Bosco

Walking in the woods where I came from was not an unusual pastime for a child. Even today the sound of twigs cracking underfoot and the smell of mulching leaves brings back memories of afternoons walking the trails of the Heldebergs with my father. Maybe it was the simplicity and beauty of the experience or perhaps it was just sharing time with someone I loved, but even today being in the woods is comforting for me. Just as being at the ocean, it is easy to experience God's presence there.

Recently, when the departure of a dear friend caused me great sorrow, I found comfort once again walking along the small strip of woods behind my house. As the tears streamed down my face and I cried to God about the pain of loss that so often seemed to find me, I noticed the singing of the birds had appeared to change and grow even sweeter, a small brown rabbit ran out from the underbrush and came to a screeching halt in front of me like a child being pushed out on stage during a recital. Even with my tears, it caused me to laugh out loud.

I began to feel the presence of God as I would have felt the arms of my father around my shoulders and so I allowed all the sorrow to spill out of my heart to the breast of God. "Will you leave me too?" I sobbed, liked a fearful child.

The answer came as I looked again at the woods around me and became very much aware of the broken trees and fallen branches that had been reclaimed by nature. Vines had wrapped themselves around every inch of their brokenness, often forming canopies and sheltering thickets for the animals and birds. It was difficult to see anything but the vines.

It seemed as though God were saying, "Why do you worry child? You know I am the vine, you are the branches."

Of course I had read it and heard it a hundred times before. There had been many interpretations of its meaning, but now the words truly meant something to me. Like the vine, God holds all things together, transforming the brokenness into the lifegiving image of Christ.

How simple, how profound, how like God.

Christ is all that others will see if we allow him to wrap himself around our hearts and souls. But he will not do it without our invitation, without our desire to offer our hearts and souls completely to God.

"I am the true vine and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit." Sometimes it seems God prunes us most with experiences of pain, cutting back unwanted growth with shears of suffering. When pain is most difficult we need to remember that the most delectable fruit, the fruit of greatest nourishment came forth from the dead and broken wood of a cross, transformed by the Vine of Love.

God will do no less with the broken pieces of our lives and our hearts - if we ask.

_______________________________________

Mary Morrell is the Associate Director of the Office of Religious Education for the Diocese of Metuchen, NJ, and the mother of six sons. She is also the author of Angels in High Top Sneakers from Loyola Press; Things My Father Taught Me, a bi-weekly column that appears in several Catholic newspapers, I'll Walk With God, a monthly newsletter published by the Metuchen Diocesan Office of Religious Education, and a writer for Real Faith TV, produced by the Diocese of Trenton, Office of Communication.

Contact

Diocese of Metuchen
http://www.diometuchen.org NJ, US
Mary Morrell - Associate Director, Office of Religious Education, 732 562-1990

Email

mmorrell@diometuchen.org

Keywords

love

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