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All for the greater glory of God!
One of the greatest experiences I ever had in my life was to have a live encounter with God. Once I came to know that God exists, I was really hungering and thirsting to experience Him. I was ready to do any fasts or penances; finally the long awaited day arrived. It was also when I least expected the Lord to touch me. It was August 29th, 1991, about two months after my first retreat.
I had become lax in my spiritual fervour, feeling that God was not going to bother with me. I had almost given up my daily prayers and sunk again into the mire of sensuality and sin. So here I was, depressed and feeling downcast, when I reached my aunt's house which was about two hours from Cochin. The same evening I reached there, there happened to be a small prayer. There was a lady who had experienced a divine touch from our Lord Jesus, she was staying at my aunt's house at the time being and she was constantly experiencing several divine caresses from our Lord Jesus. She was leading the prayer. Since I had gone backwards in my prayer life, I was feeling a bit ashamed to come in front. So I stood at the back of the small group.
I remember they all started to praise God. I was again feeling a bit ashamed to raise my hands, I was not that free in raising my hands to God. I sneaked a look at the picture of the Sacred Heart, right into the eyes of Jesus - and all my sins, my unfaithfulness to the love of Jesus was clearly displayed before me. I started to pray softly, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me, a sinner." I said it very softly, because I did not want other people to hear that I was a sinner. But then something very strange happened. My eyes were closed, and suddenly a divine power raised both my hands and they started to wave. My voice started to raise and I started to praise God louder. And suddenly, I felt a breath or a wind or a wave brushing past my body from head to toe, and I was overwhelmed. I started to cry, and my praising became a prayer, an outpouring of my soul with so many groans or sighs too deep for words - later I realised God was enabling me to pray using the gift of tongues, which is a gift of personal prayer. Tears started to fall freely as I began to think, "Lord, did you touch me at this time, when I was in the depths of sin?" Gratitude, repentance, love all flowed freely from my heart in the form of tears and vocal prayers in the form of unintelligible sounds to those near me. This experience lasted about two to three minutes.
After this, I calmed down and so did my voice, my arms ceased to wave and I felt cleansed and full of indescribable joy. Lord, you touched me and sent Your Spirit to me on that beautiful day, an experience for which I to praise You forever, God of my life!
Understanding these experiences through the Word of God was even more enriching. When I met Br. Victor, my spiritual father about a year later, I understood from Him that the wave was the Holy Spirit as described in Genesis 1:2 "And a divine wind hovered over the waters" and the waving of the hands was again the sign of the "winnowing fan" of the Spirit, with which "He cleans the threshing flour" of our soul as described in Luke 3:17.
How can we thank God for His love, especially for us sinners? How can we fail to praise His Name day after day for His innumerable favours? Happy are those who remember the Lord's blessings, and happy are those who praise Him for them continually.
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