How To Grow Deeper In Love with Jesus

Last updated on: August 13, 2023 at 9:30 pm by Sherry Antonetti

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How To Grow Deeper In Love with Jesus 2023-08-13T21:30:53-04:00 Sherry Antonetti

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Spend more time with Him, and you will find yourself much less interesting. Adoration always sets me straight. So also does real prayer –which often happens when I think it isn’t.

God loves to catch my attention and catch me by surprise by answering prayers I’ve thrown at Him in the moment. Yesterday I told God as I thought about when our schedule would allow for mass, “Lord, I miss receiving under both species. I’d really love to receive the sacred blood.” but Covid has cut back on when and where it’s administered. I also knew, I wanted to go to our home parish. Summer has often meant we’ve been at the church closer to our home rather than the parish where we are registered and have attended since 1998. We are in the Year of Parish Revival, and I thought, I should make an effort and go there.

Sure enough, when we went up to receive, I turned and saw an extraordinary minister offering me the chalice. I could hear God’s soft happy chuckle. “Caught you Sherry.” and He had.

Additionally, just last week, I’d looked at an email of “Adopt a pet,” because we’ve been trying for a dog for two years now. Usually, the rescue places interiew us, hear the size of our families and that’s all she wrote. My sister had a dog find her. So I told God, if you want this family to have a dog, you’re going to have to place it in our laps. This past weekend, we discovered we would be getting a puppy come Monday. Again, I could hear God’s soft chuckle.

Every year, I make an Ugly List of things I need to do. We’ve been chipping away at it –dentist, physicals, learner’s permits, etc. The coming dog meant my kids cleared out their stuff and we offloaded a ton of shoes, clothing and surplus stuff in donations and got rid of broken stuff. Again, this was something I felt overwhelmed by, unable to address. I prayed for help and felt we needed divine intervention to get it done.

God sent it in the form of one answered prayer resulting in the answering of another. God does that, and I have to laugh. He keeps whispering because He knows I want to hear all the punchlines, all the answered prayers that tickle and court the heart. They invite me out of the cave of loneliness, of discouragement, and fear –that something will go wrong, and out into the world of people, hope and the beauty of the miraculous.

I thought about how God also longs to revivie parish life.

He’s sending forth His spirit to help us discover all the people we would be delighted to know if we allowed ourselves to be open to forming relationships. I can hear God laughing again, delighting at what he anticipates, and knows we will love.

He’s pouring out grace to help us learn that our neighbors need our love and we need to love them, and that if we do, the world will be closer to as it should be –imitating heaven, even as we still struggle and suffer. We will be surprised by joy, and by community, and by all the answered prayers that reveal what God has always been whispering. “I love you, I made all of this for you, and it is very good.”

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