The other day Baxter was lying on my lap in a trance as I scratched behind his ear. (He loves me to scratch that spot!). Suddenly, he perks up, sits up straight with eyes wide open, and he is following something. At first, I can't see it. Baxter is bobbing up and down, back and forth, and I can't figure out what is exciting him. He ignores me and is totally occupied by whatever he sees moving around him. Nothing I do gets his attention back. He is riveted to the flying phantom that ruined his entranced pleasure. Once hooked, he was not to be deterred until he captured the elusive object.
It was a tiny gnat! I finally caught sight of the bugger and invited it to its final fly-by. Once gone, Baxter settled back to his lap of luxury with another session of behind the ear massage therapy. O, what a life!!!
The Risen Lord is sometimes like that gnat. He comes to us unexpectedly, seemingly out of nowhere, and we can't figure out what He is at first. We are lost in whatever entrances us at the time, and we don't see the tiny movement of a different kind of being. Unlike cats, our sensors are often so absorbed with the present situation that we can't acknowledge anything outside our current interest or concern. We need to develop a sixth sense fostered by our faith--a sense of the mysterious in the midst of the ordinary, a sense for the transcendent among the mundane, a sense for the holy in the little things, as Saint Theresa, the Little Flower, urged. The transformation of resurrected life comes from within, from the midst of things, from noticing another dimension to life almost hidden within the pleasures, problems, people and events of daily life. Its hints are often as elusive as a gnat, and its energy and persistence are like this tiny nuisance. It is the power of grace breaking through the numbness of our souls to bother us, to wake us up, to get us moving to God's urgings in our lives. But unlike a gnat, we can't just swat this pesky divine invader away. He is always there, and He won't go away or die. He rose from the dead to be with us until the end of the age.
So look again. He's there. He won't let us alone. If the grave couldn't contain Him, our indifference certainly can't. He doesn't sting or bite. He just wakes us up to something bigger and better, deeper and stronger than ourselves. We are moved "by the Love which turns the sun and the other stars" as Dante described it. It is flying unseen and silent all around us. Wake up and rise up with it.
