Ave Maria Mediations
My faith was looking at Jesus through the door of that tabernacle, so silent, so patient, so good, gazing right back at me! His gaze was telling me much and asking me for more. It was a gaze in which all the sadness of the Gospels was reflected; the sadness of “no room in the inn”; the sadness of those words, “Do you also want to leave Me?”; the sadness of poor Lazarus begging for crumbs from the rich man’s table; the sadness of the betrayal of Judas, the denial of Peter, of the soldiers slap, of the spittle in the praetorian, and the abandonment of all.
All of the sadness was there in that tabernacle, oppressing and crushing the sweet Heart of Jesus and drawing bitter tears from His eyes. Blessed tears from those eyes! The gaze of Jesus in that tabernacle was a gaze that pierced the soul, and no one can never forget it. I was trying not to cry, so as not to make Jesus even more sad. His gaze expressed the sorrow of One who loves, but who does not find anybody who wants to receive that love.
For me, this turned out to be a starting point: to see, understand, and feel what would consume the whole of my priestly ministry. On that afternoon, in that moment in which I was before the tabernacle, I saw that my priesthood would consist of a work of which I had never before dreamt. All my illusions about the kind of priest I would be vanished.
I found myself to be a priest in a town that didn’t love Jesus, and I would have to love Him in the name of everybody in that town. I would dedicate my priesthood to taking care of Jesus in the needs of His life in the tabernacle: to feed Him with my love, to keep Him warm with my presence, to entertain Him with my conversations, to defend Him against abandonment and ingratitude, to give relief to His Heart with my holy sacrifices, to serve Him with my feet by taking Him wherever He is desired, and with my hands by giving alms in His Name, even to those who do not love Him, and with my mouth by speaking of Him and consoling others in His Name, and by crying out to those who do not want to hear Him, until finally they would listen and begin to follow Him. This would be a beautiful priesthood!
St. Manuel Gonzalez Garcia
