CAN A CUP POUR OUT A CLEAR INTENDED MESSAGE TO US?

Please bear with my musings for a moment. 

I may appear to mention Shirley often, but friends, she is the one who dedicated her life to me and her family.  The one who during a lifetime of being together, just will never end being so.   So I know her, if I might say, intrinsically, accustomed to what replies she might engender.  Yet she constantly surprises me with different words or sayings.  

From this photo, note first of all the cup our granddaughter so carefully selected for me/us, at this Xmas. Coincidence? Definitely not.  I am trying to be as unbiased as possible (and I am not good at that). There is a subtle message here. Firstly she is telling us where she is at, quite clearly. And then it follows that under the guidance of her patroness Mary, of that I am sure, she indicates that she is here “recruiting” souls who need to hear the only words I know that Shirley is capable of giving,  “Arise my friend, I invite you to my home”.  Pretty difficult to ignore such a beautiful gesture if we can see the love that comes with it.

Then if we note the beautifully colored roses from the rose vine, growing outside just behind the photo, that she had picked out to plant there sometime before going where she is now.  I was messing with her verbally in my living area, and by now she just knew me enough to know what my mouth would utter, I said to her :

“ Shirley, the lovely color of your favorite roses just reflects so well in the color of your cheeks.  Yes.  Then again maybe I am pushing at you too much of this ‘praising’ stuff, and had better stop while I am ahead. Try accepting this as a compliment.”

What kind of response would you have maybe anticipated????

Just three words :

I ACCEPT IT.

One might gather that even in our soul’s spiritual form, accepting a compliment or praise is still something that not only is viable, but has a ‘soul warming’ feeling never to be refused. 

Sorry if I am too long winded!

As if the experience of the statue of Jesus moving his hands was not enough to let me know without a doubt that He gets right down to each and every one of us, yes even me, here is how He settled the doubts I had of the changing of the wine as I had known it. He knows the very thoughts of the most lowly such as me.

At the risk of repeating, I am a few days short of reaching 87 years of life on this planet. With my local church just an 8-minute drive from my home, I frequently attend the 9 am celebration of the mass. And so it was on this fateful day early this year. 

My seat in the second row next to the aisle is directly in front of the altar and almost has my name written on it. Well not quite so. Actually, I hear better there and keep myself away from too many other people for my lung health reasons, plus it is a much shorter walk to receive communion from the priest, 10 feet. The duration of the mass is only for 30 minutes, a time frame for some that appears to really tax the time they can “free” for this, and not one minute more.  Sounds like a little sarcasm hereNO???

At the core of the mass is what is called the ‘consecration’ of the bread and wine, as was done by Jesus nearly 2000 years ago, at the occasion of the Last Supper. Traditionalists some of us are!!.  At that moment the faith teaches us that the priest, the direct representative of Peter, appointed by Jesus himself, is entrusted with repeating this process for us to this and every day.

Now bear with me, I am not preaching but only explaining the process to those who do not know before I can tell you what happened. This is not a ‘who-done-it” mystery, and yet in the most technical sense of the story, it really is a mystery as you will see. 

I had always wondered and even thought that we were supposed to assume that a physical change would occur to the wine at that moment. Well, I was about to be shown by the One who originated this process, just what happens at the moment of consecration.  

At that moment when the priest takes hold of the chalice containing the wine he had poured into it a few minutes prior, he says some prayers and momentarily places the chalice down on the altar, all the while holding it, before raising it up for all to see. Well at that very moment, to my complete shock, two super bright bursts of ‘blood red’ light illuminated the front of the chalice, one at the mid point and another lower down. That is correct, blood red.  These bursts were done one after the other and not jointly and appeared just like you see what a drop of water does when falling on something hard like a floor. The center flattens out and leaves a sort of crown of droplets along the edges that form a circle. Instantly I looked around to see where such precise bursts could have originated. There were no special lights anywhere as it is rather somber in the church. Thenwhat could have hit exactly on the chalice as it did. ….???

Needless to say I was wondering, how this was possible. As soon as mass ended and people had left I walked up to the altar where the chalice is always placed at the end of the mass andexamined it from every possible angle. Nothing but nothing could be responsible. In the last 15 years of my active life I had from scratch rebuilt a series of 15 commercial hydroponic greenhouses, which included everything from plumbing and more importantly proper lighting. So to some extent I was aware of intensity, direction and placement of lights. Each greenhouse is 120 feet long by 30 feet wide to give you a picture of size.  

With that said, I also was well aware that each morning mass was video taped for replay on You Tube later in the day for those not able to attend physically at the church. Well you had bestbelieve me I could not get home fast enough to watch the replay of that mass. The camera always zooms in at the consecration time. I felt that the video would vindicate me from some quirk of lights that had happened. 

Now for another shock.  There were NO bursts of light in the video!!!!!  Also, the video is immediately transferred to You Tube and the caliber of the ladies running the video is challenging enough to even do this.

Ok then, what thoughts would you likely have had??    I, a doubting Thomas, was left with only one answer. The matter of only me seeing the lights meant that this was an absolute direct message to me, and me only. Stop doubting and realize that the physical wine never changes into anything else I was realizing, but rather, that Jesus showed me that the intent was to show that His presence is with the chalice.  Could a message have been more direct than what I had seen?

In closing, please do not even entertain the thought that I am anything special, but rather just someone needing conviction and trust in what Jesus had instituted at the Last Supper nearly two thousand years ago. 

So please, even if you do not subscribe to what I have written here, then just consider this some form of message from a higher authority.

To you who do believe, always keep in mind that such matterslikely happen countless times on this planet, but people seem reluctant to disclose them. An understandable process. It just takes some old geezer the likes of me who can tell it like it is.Well not really “old” but beautifully ripening, which does sound better.Please bear with my musings for a moment.