Both are Equally Effective in Squeezing the Juice from the Pulp

You see and read so much about the crosses and trials people are enduring right now.  No matter where you look, there is suffering in some way.  It has touched every family.  The rain is definitely falling on the good and bad alike.  As many of you know, it isn't that we weren't warned that purification was coming.   Maybe it's so difficult because we didn't feel we needed it.



I used the title "In the Wine Press" because that is what being purified feels like.  In my case, and what I have observed in others, it is when you suddenly find your life falling apart and there is nothing you can do to stop it or fix it.  The "falling apart" can entail many things, but generally it is the removal of all earthly security. Everything you thought made you secure; money, savings, IRA's, 401K's, health, jobs, homes, marriages and children are suddenly insecure.  They may even disappear completely and you find yourself standing there with your bare essentials.  Your world as you know it is turned upside down.  All of your best laid plans for your security are now meaningless and your future appears uncertain.  Everything is out of control.  

 In the old days, the grapes were thrown on the floor of the wine press and people would stomp on them to separate the juice from the pulp.  When you're in the wine press, you're the one on the floor.   There are days when it feels God is the one stomping. You begin to question your sanity, you question your faith, or what you thought was your faith.  It can make people do very foolish things if they don't know why this is happening to them and they have no understanding support.  It can be a painfully lonely time. Not everybody is comfortable airing their misfortunes, especially when everyone you know appears to be healthy and prosperous. It is best if you can find someone who has been through suffering and can relate to your pain and lead you through it.   It can create more stress and  pain to share your trials with someone who cannot support you. Best to find someone who can simply listen and be a light in the darkness. 

This is also the opportune time for the devil to move in and begin to lead you on the path to despair. Although your heart may not be in it, stick to prayer or establish a prayer time, even to just read a Psalm that speaks to you.  Ask those you know to pray for you.  It is a great and necessary support.

Most people who follow Christ believe that if they are living out the Commandments, practicing their faith by going to Mass regularly, praying the Rosary, practicing the Spiritual and Corporal works of mercy, going to Confession, raising their children properly, tithing, avoiding sin....that these should make for a fairly comfortable journey.  Not so.  In the Old Testament, God did reward the righteous.  Take Job for instance.  Job was extremely blessed with health, wealth, business, children and it was attributed to his belief in God and following the Law. The Old Testament is replete with stories of God rewarding the just, usually with temporal favors. The opposite is also true....for there were those who suffered God's wrath for injustice.  This is where the belief in reward/punishment began.   It appears God established this system in order to attract his children.  If you were observing Job from a distance, you would see his wealth, his family, his faith and desire it.  It was something tangible that people could aspire to and thereby lead them to God.   It was concrete; worship God, do good, receive your reward.  Many denominations of this day still teach this belief.

When Christ came, this system became obsolete so to speak.  Christ was humble and poor.  The son of a carpenter.  He never promised riches, He promised the cross for salvation.   He proclaimed poverty, humility and simplicity. He taught that our reward would be in Heaven, not on earth.  He taught that we were not to seek riches.  That it would be very difficult for the rich  to enter heaven.  This teaching of Christ's is often overlooked in our society today. Poverty and humility are scorned.  Wealth and pride are exalted. 

I believe God purifies us because He loves us.  When my family was in the thick of it, it didn't feel like love at all.  Not the love we are accustomed to.  In the worst of it, the days were truly dark and discouraging, God seemed distant and punishing, sometimes cruel. So many emotions were roaring like angry lions.  It was frightening, humiliating, discouraging and it tested every area of our lives; spiritual, emotional and physical.  There was no running from it, there was no way to console yourself.  The things we were used to and had used in the past to cope with stress were gone.  God truly did strip us bare...no safety nets to fall into, no security to fall back on, no distractions. It was definitely a make or break time. 

I was given the following passage before our purification began in earnest.  I read it, but had no idea what it really meant.   


Sirach 2:1-18

My son, when you come to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for trials.  Be sincere of heart and steadfast, undisturbed in time of adversity.  Cling to him, forsake him not; thus will your future be great.  Accept whatever befalls you, in crushing misfortune be patient; For in fire gold is tested, and worthy men in the crucible of humiliation.  Trust God and he will help you;make straight your ways and hope in him.  You who fear the Lord, wait for his mercy, turn not away lest you fall.  You who fear the Lord, trust him, and your reward will not be lost.  You who fear the Lord, hope for good things, for lasting joy and mercy.  Study the generations long past and understand; has anyone hoped in the Lord and been disappointed? Has anyone persevered in his fear and been forsaken?  has anyone called upon him and been rebuffed?  Compassionate and merciful is the Lord; he forgives sins, he saves in time of trouble.  Woe to craven hearts and drooping hands, to the sinner who treads a double path!  Woe to the faint of heart who trust not, who therefore will have no shelter!  Woe to you who have lost hope! what will you do at the visitation of the Lord?  Those who fear the Lord disobey not his words; those who love him keep his ways.  Those who fear the Lord seek to please him, those who love him are filled with his law.  Those who fear the Lord prepare their hearts and humble themselves before him.  Let us fall into the hands of the Lord and not into the hands of men, For equal to his majesty is the mercy that he shows.


The footnotes:  Serving God is not without its trials;moreover, it must be done with sincerity, steadfastness and fidelity.  Misfortune and humiliation merely purify man and prove his worth.  Patience and unwavering trust in God are always rewarded with the benefits of God's mercy and of lasting joy.  
A warning to those who compromise their religion in time of affliction; they fail in courage and trust and therefore have no security.  But those who fear the Lord through obedience, reverence, love and humility find his mercy equal to his majesty.

I was inspired in prayer to start this blog so that those of you who find yourselves in the press will know that you are not alone, you are not crazy, and that although your situation may appear hopeless, God is in control. He has a plan, and His love for you is unconditional.  You may know this in your head, but your circumstances may be telling you otherwise.

I didn't know these things when our "purification" started, which I must admit took me by surprise even though I apparently had a "heads up".  I was in control, I had a plan, and God's love was not an issue. I made my offerings of prayer daily, I was caring for the sick,  things were going well and I took that as His approval.  The servant/master relationship was working for me. I was following all the rules. Being purified like gold in the fire and crushing misfortune were not in my plan for myself or my family. 

This "purification" God begins in  your life is very hard work. For some reason, we are led to believe that it's not actually "work" to develop a healthy relationship with God or to be a true disciple.  It should be something that just happens, maybe in Church for an hour on Sunday, a give so to speak if we believe in God.  It's definitely not for the faint of heart! If you are faint, well then when it's through you will have been made strong. If you think you are strong, well then you will find out that you are really quite weak! Hence the title of this post "Both are equally effective in squeezing the juice from the pulp".

Fear dominates when everything starts falling apart. I confess, I had a craven (cowardly) heart and drooping hands.  In my case, it began when I was little and things fell apart alot. That's also where I picked up my knack for control and self sufficiency. There's nothing wrong with a good healthy fear, a holy fear.   That's not what I'm talking about here. The fear I'm talking about that I lived with is a dark, unholy, gut wrenching, paralyzing fear. My prayers were even draped in a cloak of fear.  Fear weakens you. There was very little joy,  very little hope. Fear has a way of dousing those flames. I would wake up with a pit of fear in my stomach actually afraid of the day and what it would bring and dreading it.  Prayers were really more pleadings to make God act and put out this fire!  It all appeared to be a mistake!   It seemed the more stressed and  fearful I became because of the control I was losing, the more God piled on to scare me...that's how I perceived it anyways. I told God often that if the point of all this was to kill me, rather than just slowly scaring me to death  I would just run out in the road in front of the first available truck and get it over with. It's amazing how little we understand and know God. God our Father. I can laugh now, but it was NOT funny then. I began to see what He was trying to do.  I also began to understand the above passage from Sirach.   I really wasn't any of those things....I definitely was not undisturbed in time of adversity, quite the opposite.  I couldn't accept crushing misfortune and be patient, I obviously wasn't worthy because I balked at humiliation, I was finding out I had a huge craven heart and very droopy hands, and I was comfortable treading a double path.  I was faint of heart because I really lacked trust in God and I was losing my shelter. I believed in God, but I did not trust Him.  I say "I" even though this affected my whole family.  I don't speak for my husband, only to say that he was suffering also but handled the stress in a different way.  We weren't what you would call "united" in our faith, or much of anything for that matter, when all this began. 

What's the old saying, "the poison is the cure". 

"Dear Child, you suffer so from fear and stress.  I will allow more so that it will become so horrible for you to live in it, you will DESIRE to be free of it and trust Me."

That's exactly what happened. I had become physically sick from fear...ulcer, gallbladder attacks, fatigue, body aches...the walking dead.  It was very difficult to work, be a good wife and mother, and be available for others' needs with this burden of fear and the sickness it was causing.  Fear had become my focus. I was taking Prilosec with Pepcid shooters. I finally decided that nothing in THIS world was worth feeling like this every day. The fear and shame of losing the life I created because I couldn't save it was crushing me. The verse came to mind from Matthew 6:25:
 

"For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it."  

This was no "life" that I was living. I thought it was...it took me 25 years to build! I was finally willing to lose my life for the sake of God, so that I could find it.  It has been a journey, and definitely not the way I would have done it had God allowed me to stay in control, but God knows best I have learned. He very often does not give us what we want, He gives us what we need. I "needed" to lose the life I had made for us so that we could live the life He had planned for us. I needed to lose the "craven" heart and be made strong. I needed to learn patience and trust in Him in misfortune.  I needed to learn how to suffer humiliation in a healthy way.   I discovered that emotional health is very important to spiritual health. So, God was really showing me when I received the above verses that it was what He was going to do in me, not what He expected of me. I very often received the words "you can't put new wine in old wineskins" but wasn't sure how it pertained to me....it meant that the old wineskin of fear and lack of trust had to go. It wasn't strong enough to hold real faith.

If you are living with fear right now for whatever reason...job loss, foreclosure, bill collectors, sickness...any threat to your security, know that it is Divine Love that casts out all fear. Do not give up praying, even in your fear, doubt and darkness.  Know that God is purifying many of us in the fire even though you feel completely alone. Pray for the grace of Divine Love. God will surely give you that if you ask.  You may not feel it now, or believe it yet, but there really is nothing "secure" in this life. All things really are passing.  Our only security is in God and that is what He is trying to show you. He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.

For today, make a radical act of your will to believe God in spite of what is threatening you, in spite of the fire you are in, with no regard to your emotions....He will not leave you orphaned!