Overwhelmed by the Great Lover

A retreatant’s e-mail…sends news about the Great Lover who uses our current obsessions only to reach out to us, meeting us in our own terms.

Thank you for your reminder re: the Feb 13 RDL Lenten Recollection, which had completely skipped my mind. When my sessions with my retreat guide were completed before Christmas, I assumed that all retreat requirements for the 18th Annotation had been completed as well. Also my wife and I had to leave for the U.S. last Jan 3 to be with my eldest daughter who was expecting her first baby.

We are scheduled to be back in Manila on Feb 12 which should enable me to attend the recollection the following day. Your note also reminded me that I had asked my retreat director in our last session if it was possible to continue my retreat and complete the 19th Annotation despite the break occasioned by my U.S. trip. She said this was possible and suggested that I write you a note formalizing my request which I am hereby belatedly doing. I hope you can accommodate my request and that my retreat guide’s travel plans have changed to enable her to continue directing my retreat.

Even though I was so engrossed with my new “apo” and was not even thinking of the RDL, the Lord has a way of using our current obsessions to reach out to us, in this case with an unexpected insight. As I carried this tiny and so helpless little baby in my arms just a couple of weeks after Christmas, I was overwhelmed by the thought of this all powerful God whose love for us is so great that He allowed Himself to become as vulnerable as this infant. This thought is every bit as remarkable as His allowing Himself to be tortured and put to death on the cross. And the blessed Mother, what great consolations she must have experienced watching at the foot of the cross as her Son slowly died an agonizing death. The joy of Christmas and the brutal Passion and Death are then just two sides of the same Great Love. To know more about this Great Lover is reason enough to continue and complete the RDL 19th Annotation.