Hi BobCatholic,
I would like to share one of my experience with you. I kindly request readers not to re post this anywhere else.
We were preparing for my 2nd daughter baptism. My mother was with us visiting. She is a conservative. Then my wife, as she just had the baby, could not do much during baptism days. My first daughter is just 7 and so could not be of much help…
We had lots of friends. We gather as families under an association. They have lots of youths. I always wanted to pray and do something for the youths so that they grow in their Love towards God. So I wanted to invite about 25 families for the Baptism Mass. I ended up buying thoughtful gifts for all the youths attending. Most of them were saints and spiritual books by age and personality (to the best of my knowledge). We had arranged for lunch for all attendees. Believe me, this is common in the culture where we are from. Back there, you could pull this for a reasonable price.
We could afford about $400.00 for the whole thing. However, in US, the whole Baptism ceremony (Church hall fees, lunch fees, gift expenses) came to around $1200.00. After starting this endeavor, I tried to minimize at every level, this is the best I could minimize.
Anyways, due to my mother’s nature, we could not enough information to her on how much we were spending or working on this. One example is we had to ship the gifts to a friends house to conceal this. Otherwise she would break and go crazy. However, she had some vague idea. So she was unhappy and you could see from her face.
Eventually on the night before the Baptism, I got tired and felt very lonely. My mom on one side is looking very sad. Anyone can read her face the next day that she is sad. I was praying all along with our Lord Jesus to help me. There were 4 priests, 3 of which were from our native country speak same language and were living close by my place, agreed to celebrate the Mass. $1200 expense is not counting the gift checks to three of our language priests. They are all lovely priests. I had planned to have $50 - $75 in envelopes for each of them.
3 days after the Baptism, my family was going to leave the country for a year to go live with my mother, leaving me to work here. This arrangement has to be made considering many situations in the spiritual love perspective. Due to our family leaving immediately after the Baptism, we requested all the invited friends, in a gentle way, to save the giving of any gifts to another occasion if possible.
And the day of the Baptism came. In the morning, I was very tired. For some reason, my mind was sad and gloomy. I felt lonely and helpless in the bottom of my heart. You can see me walking back and forth in the Church, talking to the priests making sure they familiarize with each other, helping them for setting up the Mass, making sure my family is feeling comfortable, calling the restaurant to check on the food, bring the gift packages for youths and the younger children, nervously waiting for everyone to arrive on time, also not knowing how would I manage the expenses, etc.
I spoke in my heart with our Lord very sad. I said to our Lord that I would like to see Him since I felt that it is going to cheer me up on these circumstances.
All of a sudden, I started to feel like the Lord talking to me… Go see outside, I am coming to meet you. I am waving hands at you. I will be hugging you. I will be smiling at you…
Now I go outside, I see few of my friends parking a little far in the parking lot, waving hands at me. One by one they all started to walk towards me in friendly gestures. Many of them hugged me, shook hands with me in joy. They all smiled at me.
Dear friends, to be honest with you… I could not stop crying in my heart. Lord comes in 50s of smiles with 50s of faces, 50s of hugs with 50s of bodies, 50s of joyful handshakes with 50s of hands, 10s of flowers in 10s of hands, etc. May of them smiled at me at the same time. May of them waved at me at the same time in joy. How about me? Can I hug all of them back at the same time? Can I smile looking at everyone at the same time? I can only do one at a time. I felt my limitation in loving our Lord back. Now I felt loved too much… I could not control my joy and broke into tears. I went to the other extreme of sadness of unable to love Him back… feeling so much loved and thanking our Lord for this experience…
After all this is ended, some handed over some envelopes to me. some handed over some gift cards. Anyways… together, we received checks total worth of $1300. None of the priests would take any gift from me. Two of them said that they came, were happy to celebrate the Mass and did it for Love. They used the word Love explicitly for not accepting the gifts extended. One of them strongly refused to take anything. After learning this, my mother went silent. And gift cards to buy diapers and baby formulas for my Baptized baby for 3 months the least. Can I repay God for this favor? Not truly in my lifetime. I will have to try. This is when we clearly can feel that we have so much limitation in loving our Lord back for His Love.
All this is with respect to one occasion in our life. How about every day, every moment, etc.? We do not have capacity to love Him back. If only we could feel His love on us, we will hug him and will never leave him for a moment.
Since you want hug from the Lord… please from the depth of your heart, as a child, truly ask the Lord for the same. I am 100% sure, He will give it to you perfectly so that you really feel it. You may end up asking our Lord to stop hugging for otherwise you might choke from His deep and loving hugging…
Thanks…
