Reflections

By J Douglas Barry

My reflections on the life and teachings of Christ! As well as my personal experience in my love of God. E.G. my reception of a bleeding Eucharist after much suffering. Plus my searching for the face of Christ much as the Psalmist did.

• Language: English
• Publisher: URLink Print & Media, LLC
• Release date: May 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9781643673745

J Douglas Barry

Having felt a call to follow Christ at an early age, it took many years of searching on my part that eventually led to a life of contemplation and continuous prayer. I spent time in the US Marine Corps, graduated from Florida State University with a major in Philosophy, and followed this with years of trying to help poor African Americans in Florida. This led to a year at the Maryknoll Seminary in Massachusetts. But still, this was not the Lord was calling me to. I then spent five years working with profoundly, mentally challenged adults. During this time, I went on a retreat with the Carthuson Monks in Vermont. I really loved the week of solitude, contemplation, prayer, and fasting. Since then, I have made numerous retreats with the Trappist Monks, primarily in Spencer, Massachusetts, at St. Joseph Abbey. In 1993, while at a Catholic Mass, I had a profound feeling to write about the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. For the past twenty-two years, I've worked on my manuscript, Reflections, and tried to find a publisher. I am seventy-one years of age, living in Andover northeast of Boston Massachusetts. I have three sisters, four nephews, one niece, and two Cambodian godchildren who are greatly loved and to whom this work is dedicated.

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Reflections

Copyright © 2019 by J. Douglas Barry. All rights reserved.

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Published in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-64367-375-2 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64367-376-9 (Hardback)

ISBN 978-1-64367-374-5 (Digital)

29.04.19

To Saman and Sarin and saint Jacinta Marto of Fatima

Contents

1 The Desert Within

2 The Visitation

3 Celibacy

4 Obedience and Respect

5 Martha and Mary

6 The Love of God

7 Agony in the Garden

8 His Most Precious Blood

9 On Life

10 The Last Miracle

11 On the Different Levels of Experiencing God

12 The Descent of the Holy Spirit

13 My Personal Search for the Face of God

14 Meditations on the Holy Rosary

1

The Desert Within

CHRIST CALLS EACH of us to embrace him by deepening our personal experience of him through both prayer and liturgy. An awareness of God in the Trinity allows us to enter into the desert where Christ truly lives. He does not live there alone but rather in every person we see.

Some, such as those living in a monastic environment, have chosen to search for God in the solitary life. The community in which they live promotes a truly desert environment. Others, those who are members of a religious organization but who live outside a monastic enclosure, experience the desert through the occasional retreat that they make to either a monastery or a retreat house.

There is a third group, one in minority that is neither in the monastic setting nor a member of a religious community, working among the poor, elderly, or just those in need. This latter group is made up of individuals with little or no group support who have chosen to give their life to God by helping anyone in need. Through their charity, they have come to know Christ, for it is he who has called them.

Eventually, this charity or love of others will bring them to know God on a deeper level, even if they initially began to help others just for the sake of helping them and not necessarily as a conscious effort to follow Christ. For it is Christ who has planted the seed of love in their hearts, and this love will at some point bring a conscious realization that it is in Christ and for Christ that their every act of charity has its origin.

Once a conscious awareness of Christ dwelling within them has taken place, a searching, even a longing, for greater knowledge of him takes root within their being. This is not an overnight process but rather one that takes many years of nurturing.

Liturgy, spiritual reading, and personal prayer play an important part of experiencing Christ. We must remember that it is in Scripture that we read So faith, hope love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:13). We read further, …so faith, apart from works is dead (James 2:26). Most importantly, when Christ was asked what the two greatest commandments were, his response was "you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind….And a second