Gifts Taken Away by God

This past April my friend Sister Marie Benedicta of the Cross took her final vows in a cloister Carmelite community in Des Plaines.  This vow she took said that she would be part of this enclosed (cloister) community for the rest of her life praying for the world and priests!  It was beautiful ceremony and day, but it was also a sad day for me as well.

It was joyous to see someone surrender with great joy to their calling.  It was sad because in a way my friendship with sister Marie Benedicta of the Cross was given up to the Lord.  Sarah Pica, her name before she entered the Carmelites, had become a dear friend of mine and the Lord gave me a tremendous friend.  When she entered the Caramelite community on July 16th, 2009, I was also vested with the Carmelite scapular.  In a sense Sister Marie Benedicta of the Cross has been with me through out my vocation praying for me! But because of her final vows, our friendship can no longer be the same.  No longer can we just hang out and talk, if I do see her, I can only see her through a grate under permission of her Mother Superior.  I can only reminisce of preparing to work with kids through a program of Totus Tuus and a road trip to a Priestly ordination ending up with tornadoes landing within a miles of us!

Our friendship was a great gift from the Lord, which He had given to me in a crucial part of my life.  But He also took her away from me! I couldn't help but have tears of  joy and sadness on her special day in which she gave her life to her cloister community!

(A picture with Sarah Pica before she entered the cloister.)

It became clearer to me that day that the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. The purpose of any gift is to draw us closer to Him.  And the purpose is the same when he takes away those gifts.  All life is a gift and it is a continued to lesson to see all those things in my life given and taken away through time. 

When Sister entered her order, I knew it would mean surrendering the friendship I was so greatly blessed with.  In a sense the sorrow was because I was mourning a loss of a friendship that I blessed to have, even if it was for only a couple of years. 

Fulton Sheen gives us beautiful insight of why the Lord takes away those whom we love: "When God takes someone from us, it is always for a good reason.  When the sheep have grazed and thinned the grass in the lower regions, the shepherd will take a little lamb in his arms, carry it up the mountain where the grass is green, lay it down, and soon the other sheep will follow.  Every now and then Our Lord takes a lamb from the parched field of a family up to those heavenly green pastures so that the rest of the family may keep their eyes on their true home and follow through." All gifts should lead us back to Him!!! Let us give thanks to all the beautiful gifts he has given to us and those gifts he has taken away from us so that we may trust Him all the more!!!