Time Travel

Let's back up a moment. About a week and a half ago I was in Rome, as you know. I still had much travel ahead of me, but barely enough time for it--there's never enough time, right? My solution: time travel.

It didn't work out quite the way I had imagined, though. After a seven-hour layover in Philadelphia, where I ate some kind of egg and cheese bagel sandwhich, I finally made it to Houston. It was easy to tell I was there because the ambient temperature had risen by about 20 degrees. I stayed the night with a friend--who will be ordained a Catholic priest in Corpus Christi on July 10th, actually--then headed back to the airport to fly out of Houston. That was a quick stay. Well, I did manage to go to Mass downtown at Annunciation parish, I think it was, and drive a little through the new renovations in east Houston. My next destination? Albuquerque!

I flew to Dallas first to change planes, then was delayed. Of course. Meanwhile I'm reading a book, Under the Torrent of His Love: Therese of Lisieux, a Spiritual Genius, by Marie-Eugene of the Child Jesus, a Carmelite priest and lifelong devotee of Therese. Written before she was declared by Pope John Paul II as a "Doctor of the Church," the book is a spellbinding synthesis of Therese's "Little Way." I can let the book speak for itself by quoting a short passage from the Introduction:

To our sophisticated and bored civilization, which has lost the sense of the infinite and suffers from this, God has sent a child who, with the charm and luminous purity of her simplicity, brings us once more the eternal message of his love, namely, that he has created us out of love, that his love is still vibrant and all the more eager because of our desertion, and that he is waiting for us to love him and to let ourselves be loved by him like very small children . . . At each turning point in history the Holy Spirit places a guide; to each civilization as it arises he provides a master to shed his light . . . It is always risky to prophesy. But is it prophesying, or is it simply an expression of my thought and conviction--based on the work already accomplished, the vastness of the field in which she exerts her influence, which is the entire world, and the power and purity of the light she casts about her--when I affirm that Therese will be, in fact already is, one of the great spiritual teachers of the Church, one of the most effective spiritual guides of all times?

I did finally make it to Albuquerque. My friend, Jimmy, picked me up at the airport. I greeted him with buona sera and found it difficult to speak English after that. In fact, it took me about 20 minutes to untie my tongue; meanwhile, he responded with snippets of Spanish and Italian. I think I was just a little out of my gourd, considering my body was still on Roman time, where it was around three o'clock in the morning. After arriving at his house, going back out for dinner, then returning once again, we managed to stay up talking 'till three o'clock in the morning, Albuquerque time.

This is what I'm talking about: time travel! Have you ever heard of the Intercessors of the Lamb? Neither had I, until Saturday night. On the first Saturday of the month, Jimmy and his wife host a prayer group at their home--they pray the Rosary together and have a cookout! Among their friends is a Spirit-filled young woman, Megan, who introduced me to the Intercessors and their charism, which is centered around contemplative prayer, intercession, and spiritual warfare. Very interesting, I thought to myself, this is one more piece in the puzzle that I have slowly been assembling for the past six months. Well actually, the origin of this puzzle lies much further back, but the proximate origin began at the beginning of this year, when I was in Mexico. But that's another story.

This concludes my first three days back in the States. For the sake of brevity, utility, and sanity, I will continue the story of my time travels in future posts, until we reach the present moment. We've still got three states and six more cities to go!