Be the Light to the World

At Sunday's mass, 2/5/17, the priest gave an amazing insight into the first reading which got me to thinking.  He told us about how there were three switches to turn the light of God on in us and three switches to turn off the darkness.  He also mentioned that there are some parts to this reading that were poorly translated from the original Hebrew. 

 

Reading 1 Is 58:7-10

Thus says the LORD:
Share your bread with the hungry,
shelter the oppressed and the homeless;
clothe the naked when you see them,
and do not turn your back on your own.
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your wound shall quickly be healed;
your vindication shall go before you,
and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer,
you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!
If you remove from your midst
oppression, false accusation and malicious speech;
if you bestow your bread on the hungry
and satisfy the afflicted;
then light shall rise for you in the darkness,
and the gloom shall become for you like midday.

 

The three switches to turn on the light are:  1- Share your bread with the hungry, 2 - shelter the oppressed and the homeless, 3- clothe the naked, not turning your back on your own.

 

The three switches to turn off the darkness are to remove from your midst: 1- oppression, 2- false accusation,  3- malicious speech.

 

The pieces of this reading which are subject to a relook at the original Hebrew are: 

 

"Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh."

 

"If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking wickedness;"

 

"And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in darkness, and thy gloom be as the noon-day"

Hebrew - English Translation

 

The points that he emphasized were the fact that the actual passage calls us to not just to shelter the homeless but to bring them into our own homes, that in clothing the naked, they are not just our own but our own flesh, our own family.  That in removing from our midst "oppression" the actual word is "the yoke" which has a much deeper association with slavery and overburdening as overburdening a beast.  A sense that people can be dehumanized and isolated.  Instead of false accusation the real phrase used is "putting forth of the finger" which is more of blaming others, and for that matter judging others.  And not just removing "malicious speech" but removing "speaking wickedness."  This is more to the idea of any focus on anything wicked.  In other words the focus should be God.  And the one that really caught my attention was:  "draw out thy soul to the hungry", not "bestow your bread on the hungry."  Now I can sympathize with the translators, in our own base frame of reference that doesn't make any sense but in the light of the Divine Will it makes a world of sense.

So in looking at these topics in the Volumes of feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless and feeding the hungry he calls us to do these things in imitation of how he deals with us but more so he even wants us to do these things in turn for him.

Now nakedness has such a deeper meaning in the light of God.  He speaks of how he was stripped in his passion and how this was necessary to repair for how Man stripped himself of his royal garment given to him by God.  We lost the light of the Divine Will which clothed us and we were left naked in our own base nothingness.

 

“My daughter, in my Passion there is a lament of mine which came out with immense sorrow from the depth of my tormented Heart:  ‘They divided my garments and drew lots for my tunic.’  How painful it was for Me to see my garments being divided among my very executioners, and my tunic being gambled away.  It was the only object I possessed, given to Me, with so much love, by my sorrowful Mama; and now, they not only stripped Me of it, but they made of it a game.  But do you know who pierced Me the most?  In those garments, Adam became present to Me, clothed with the garment of innocence and covered with the indivisible tunic of my Supreme Will.  In creating him, the uncreated Wisdom acted as more than a most loving mother; more than with a tunic, It clothed him with the unending light of my Will – a garment which is not subject to being either disarranged, or divided, or consumed; a garment which was to serve man in order to preserve the image of his Creator and the gifts received from Him, and which was to render him admirable and holy in all his things.  Not only this, but It covered him with the overgarment of innocence.  And Adam, in Eden, with his passions divided the garments of innocence, and he gambled away the tunic of my Will – a garment which is incomparable and of radiant light. 

Vol. 20, Dec 12, 1926

In My Passion I wanted to suffer being stripped in the flagellation and placed nude on the cross, being torn apart in such a horrible way that My bones could even be counted -[I wanted to suffer] all amid the confusion, abandonment, and unspeakable bitternesses.  All of that was nothing other than the fruit of the human volition which had stripped (the creature) of all goods, and with its poisonous breath had covered him with confusion and humiliations to the point of transforming him in a horrible way and making him the object of scorn for all his enemies. 

Vol. 21, April 14, 1927


But Jesus wants to cloth us again.  As God calls us to cloth the naked because they are our own flesh so he wants to cloth us.  We are his own flesh.  And he can only do this with the soul who wants to live in his Divine Will being willing to let go of the rags of her human will.

By entering into It[the Divine Will], the soul forms one single act with the Divine Will, and as though naturally she takes part in what It does and contains.  More so, since in order to live in my Will, the soul is first stripped of the garments of the old guilty Adam, and is clothed anew with the garments of the new and holy Adam.  Her garment is the light of the Supreme Will Itself, through which all Its divine manners are communicated to her, which are noble and communicative to all.  This light makes her lose the human features and restores in her the physiognomy of her Creator.

Vol. 19, February 28, 1926


But when Jesus asks us to cloth others he is also asking us to cloth him and as he does for us so are we to do for him.

“My Person is surrounded by all the works that souls do, as by a garment; and the more purity of intention and intensity of love they have, the more splendor they give Me, and I will give them more glory; so much so, that on the Day of Judgment I will show them to the whole world, to let the whole world know how my children have honored Me, and how I honor them.”

Vol. 2, May 7, 1899



But this is not all.  In the Divine Will all the creatures acts become veils, accidents, like in the Eucharist, to cloth, enclose our God so that he might have true life in us.  But life needs to be nourished.  So we ourselves feed him with our loving acts, which are all his acts which we take on as our own and return to him.  These nourish his Divine life in us.  So as he feeds us so we feed him, as he clothes us so we clothe him and as he shelters us in his own home so do we do so for him.  And so we "draw our soul" out to him to feed him.

The Divine Will forms the true and perfect consecration of the Divine Life in the soul.

 

Continuing in my usual state and being very afflicted because of the privations of Jesus, after many hardships He came, making Himself seen in all of my poor being.  It seemed to me as if I were the garment of Jesus.  Then, breaking the silence, He told me:

 

“My daughter, you too can form hosts and consecrate them.  Do you see the garment that covers Me in the Sacrament?  These are the accidents of the bread with which the host is formed.  The life which exists in this host is my Body, my Blood and my Divinity.  The attitude which contains this life is my Supreme Will, and this Will carries out the love, the reparation, the immolation, and all the rest that I do in the Sacrament, which never moves one point from my Volition.  There is nothing that comes from Me which is not led by my Volition.

“Here is how you too can form the host.  The host is material and totally human; you too have a material body and a human will.  This body and this will of yours - if you keep them pure, upright and far away from any shadow of sin - are the accidents, the veils, so that I may be able to consecrate Myself and live hidden within you.  But this is not enough; it would be like the host without consecration - my life is needed.  My life is composed of sanctity, of love, of wisdom, of power, etc., but the engine of all is my Will.  Therefore, after you have prepared the host, you must make your will die in this host; you must cook it well, so that it may not be born again.  Then you must let my Will permeate all your being; and my Will, which contains the whole of my life, will form the true and perfect consecration.  So, the human thought will have life no more, but only the thought of my Volition, and this consecration will create my wisdom in your mind; no more life for what is human, for weakness, for inconstancy, because my Will will form the consecration of the Divine Life, of fortitude, of firmness, and of all that I am.  So, each time you make your will, your desires, and all that you are and that you may do, flow into my Will, I will renew the consecration, and I will continue my life within you as in a living host - not a dead one, like the hosts without Me. 

“But this is not all.  In the consecrated hosts, in the pyxes, in the Tabernacles, everything is dead - mute; not a heartbeat sensibly, not a surge of love which may correspond to so much love of mine.  If it wasn’t for the fact that I wait for hearts in order to give Myself to them, I would be quite unhappy, I would remain defrauded in my love, and my sacramental life would remain without purpose.  And if I tolerate this in the Tabernacles, I would not tolerate it in living hosts.  So, life needs nourishment, and in the Sacrament I want to be nourished, and I want to be nourished with my own food – that is, the soul will make my Will, my love, my prayers, reparations and sacrifices her own; she will give them to Me as if they were her own things, and I will nourish Myself.  The soul will unite with Me, she will prick up her ears to hear what I am doing so as to do it together with Me; and as she keeps repeating my own acts, she will give Me her food, and I will be happy.  Only in these living hosts will I find the compensation for the loneliness, the starvation, and all that I suffer in the Tabernacles.”

Vol. 11, December 17, 1914   


We are not only called to help our neighbor in these acts of feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked.  These are only the beginning lessons that God is leading us in.  As in all things everything returns to God and so must our acts.  He calls us to imitate him as he feeds us, clothes us, and brings us into his home.  So that we might in turn, feed him, clothe him and make a life together with him.

“My daughter, the Creation of man was the center where our Divinity centralized all the goods that should rise in the creature, we put in her Divine Life and Divine Will, human life and human will; human life should serve us as residence, and the two Wills fused together should make life in common with highest accord, indeed the human will should take from ours in order to form her acts, and ours should remain in the continuous act to give of his, in order to make that the human will might remain modeled and all informed in the Divine Will.  Now, there is no life, as much human, spiritual and divine, that doesn’t have need of food in order to grow, in order to become stronger, to embellish and to felicitate himself.  More so that we put our Divine life in man, [and] because he was incapable of receiving the whole fullness of our Divine Being, we put in him how much he could contain of our life, giving him the liberty to let him grow how much more he could and wanted.  Hence our life in man for growth had need of food, behold the necessity to put in him a Divine Will; our Divine life would not have adapted himself to foods of the human will.  Behold therefore all the acts of the creature done in virtue of and in our Divine Will, would serve to feed and to make our Divine Life grow in her, in a way that as soon as she went doing her acts in our Fiat, now she took our love and fed us, now she took our fortitude, now our infinite sweetness, now our Divine joys in order to feed us.  What order, what harmony put between him and us in creating man between him and us, even to ask of him our own foods through his means, not because we had need, no, but in order to maintain the enthusiasm of love, the correspondence, the inseparable union between him and us.  And while he occupied himself with us, we occupied ourselves with feeding him and with conserving our dear residence, not only, but making him other more beautiful gifts in order to render him more happy, to love him more and make ourselves more loved.  But do you want to know what are our most beautiful gifts that we make the creature?  To manifest to her a knowledge of our Supreme Being, a truth that pertains to us, one secret of ours is the most beautiful gift that we make her; each of these gifts is one more bond that we put between Her and us, our every truth is a property that we put in her soul.  Behold therefore that in the soul where our Will reigns we find our Divine foods, our property for how much it is possible for a creature, our residence, hence we find ourselves in our house, in our center, in the midst of our properties.  Do you see therefore what it means to make our Will reign and the great good to make you know our truths?  Our every knowledge carries, each one, its distinct gift, some carry his light, some fortitude, some goodness, some wisdom, some love and so on, each one of them binds the creature in a special way to God and God to her.  Therefore know how to correspond to the so many gifts that your Jesus has made you, and you live always in our Volition.”

Vol. 29, Aug 3, 1931


 All of this can only happen when one makes a firm decision to turn from one's own human will and asks to live only of His Divine Will.  This is the starting point to switching off the darkness in ourselves and switching on the light of God.