White Cloud

It is the beginning of Lent. My husband is gone on tour and per usual I take my refuge in church. I load all six children up after school and go to church to sit in the Presence. The sunset is breathtaking, a perfect orange circle in a creamsicle sky. The children want me to take a photo but my phone is dead. I keep looking at the sunset in my rear view, thinking about the fiery star and the One who made it.

We kneel walk around the Sanctuary for the Way of the Cross in reparation for the Satanic rituals described in the Epstein Files. Through the flu I have been holed up reading about these horrific sins against God, these acts of violence to make God hurt and mar His creations, His Image. I am so stressed by them I have wanted to expatriate, I have ground my teeth to the point of pain. And at Ash Wednesday Mass, when I poured my heart out to God about it, I knew suddenly how He has seen it all. He knows everything. I have to submit to His sovereignty in allowing it.

A priest comes in to expose Jesus in the monstrance and I adore Him till my 4 year old Sophie starts to fuss. Then I send my 9 year old in to pray, as he was watching the 2 year old Janie for me. After a while he comes outside, where his sisters are playing monkey bars on the handicap railings. “Mama! I felt like Jesus wanted me to go up to the communion rail, so I did, and when I was there I saw a white cloud rising from the floor. I think it was Jesus!”

I quiz him, finding that while Jesus was in the monstrance the white cloud was rising up from the floor underneath the red candle that is lit to announce the Presence. I tell my son Gabriel about how God appeared as the Cloud and the Pillar of Fire that led the Israelites in the Old Testament toward the Promised Land.

The next day I keep hearing the soundtrack for the Prince of Egypt in my head. Even my 5 year old Elsie is wanting me to sing Hush Now, My Baby so she can in turn sing it to the baby Lily. After our school is done for the day we turn the movie on and I am amazed to see Moses speaking with the white fire of the burning bush. Gabriel gets excited. “That looks just like what I saw, Mama!”

We continue to watch and I marvel at how God saved the Israelites from the Egyptians, and how their great sin was child sacrifice. My children look in horror at the childish depictions of babies being thrown to crocodiles. “Did they really do that, Mama?!”

Later that day Gabrie tells me, “Mama, I think seeing God in the white smoke gave me the strength to be more patient with my sisters and not get so angry at them.”

To be their Mama… to be the person that is always there, always listening

Then on Saturday, after hours of deep cleaning, I go to church to play piano for the vigil mass. All my children stay home with my babysitter and after mass I get to go sit in the Presence all by myself. I feel God wants me to kneel to make reparation for the sins described in the Epstein Files. I kneel for over fifteen minutes, through the aches and pains, and eventually start to weep, letting Jesus see all the trauma from what I have read, ruminating on the pain of these women and babies and children. And I feel Jesus’s pain, see Mary’s tears, and I ask her to hold me, hold me next to her heart while she holds the Child Jesu, so I can be near both their hearts. All day as I have cleaned I have seen multiple hearts, in bits of paper and food scraps and dust piles.

Saying “I love you”. It is Jesus’s Sacred Heart, Mary’s Immaculate Heart. In a way they are entwined, for Jesus created Mary and Mary’s Heart grew the baby Jesus.

I know that all the pain of these victims of satanic violence, not only in the Epstein Files but throughout history and still going on now, is just a drop in the bucket in the full scope of eternity. God sees outside of time. He sees all the pain and suffering from the other side of everlasting life. This life with all its horror is just a blink of an eye in comparison to eternity. I ask Him to save these victims. Save them through my penances.

And remember too, that though it is hard to see because of the shock of sin, the joyful good is so much stronger. The laughter of a baby, well loved at her mother’s face and nourished at her mother’s breast. The great pleasure of a husband and wife in unity, creating new life through their love. The self-sacrificial, fierce care of a mother for her children.

The works of charity.

These are so much stronger. Offer up your joys for the salvation of souls. Like the laughter energy on Monsters Inc, those joys conquer evil. But also, as Our Lady of Fatima said, “Penance. Penance. Penance!”