“Whatever is received into something is received according to the condition of the recipient.”

Saint Thomas Aquinas said, “Whatever is received into something is received according to the condition of the recipient.”  God is always generous in His giving, but we limit His generosity when we are unwilling or unfit to receive Him.  I am coming out of a crisis of faith.  That’s why I wrote the previous post, because though my latest pilgrimage reignited the embers that so needed to be relit- it also mimicked what I have been internally experiencing.  Martha, our skeptic guide personified what I had been feeling lately and through her challenges about what was real and not- I realized that I myself had been doing that with God through mandated isolation and even after the pandemic restrictions were lifted.  I got comfortable being away from my religious community, away from Mass, away from God… 

In Loreto, there wasn’t enough room at the hotel we had reservations to accommodate our group and five of us including myself had to be driven to a nearby location to sleep.  That night, I was exhausted and was planning on skipping dinner to go to my room and sleep and it wasn’t until after everyone had left to their rooms that the leftover five were told that after dinner we would be driven to a nearby hotel for the night.  I was super frustrated to receive this news like a bucket of water and because we had to wait in the lobby for an hour before dinner and I was the only on that wanted to skip on dinner. So, I had to brave it three more hours before I could be taken to my room for rest.  When we made to the hotel, I realized that it was a retreat house and not a hotel. My room was very humble, but there was a painting above my bed of Mary and Child and that gave me confidence that I would have a good night sleep.  It wasn’t until morning when we were to be taken back to join our group that we noticed that we had slept right outside the church where the walls of Mother Mary’s house are kept.  I guess Mamita wanted to have me near during the night!

Later that morning, when we all boarded the tour bus, the driver missed a metal rod that stuck out and I was awaken by the glass of my window cracking. I was terrified, but quickly noticed that only the outside glass had cracked.  After analyzing the damage, the driver thought it safe to continue on our way, but as we started to drive pieces of the glass started breaking, I was terrified that the weight of the shatter glass was going to break the inner glass. However, the bus driver was able to pull over in time, remove all the cracked glass and we continued on our way safe with the inner window still intact.  It wasn’t an hour later that I heard a scream and the noticed that one of the passengers had fallen out of his seat asleep and his wife shrieked trying to keep him from hitting the ground. After assessing the situation, we laughed, but I was a little on edge from all the unexpected happenings.

I dwelled a little too long on all the things going wrong with the trip, that I felt like an unwilling recipient to all of what God wanted to give me.  Yet, God is good all the time, because now after a few weeks back I feel so many graces that I am receiving as I look back.