At Walmart with Jesus

Saturday, September 3, 2022

I’m now on my own here in Steubenville, and I’m taking what Father J. said seriously: “Remember, all Jesus wants is to be with you.”

So I take him wherever I go. He becomes my go-to person. Yes, I still do my rote prayers, the Morning Offering and the Rosary and the nightly Liturgy of the Hours (when I’m not too tired), but I also talk to him, ask him his opinion about trivial things, like what color sweater to buy. Call me delusional, but I can tell he loves it as much as our former one-on-one visits at my old church.

Today, we are at Walmart, and I’m in the market for a new cardigan and some T-shirts. I usually don’t buy clothes at Walmart, but sometimes they have pretty good essentials; all cotton and better quality than you could find at higher-priced stores.

I call on the Holy Spirit to show me what to buy, and it becomes a fun game between us. I’m looking for a dark-blue cardigan, but searching the sweater section, I’m coming up empty… until suddenly there is one, hanging very visibly at the front of a rack where it doesn’t belong. It’s also exactly my size. He does the same thing twice more, and then I’m done. What an amazing and exhilarating way to go clothes shopping!

I go home, put my purchases away, make some coffee, and open my laptop. As I’m scrolling through my Twitter feed, one meme jumps out at me and makes me laugh so hard that I almost fall off my chair:

You do have the best sense of humor, Jesus. I love you so much.

Halloween has been weighing on my mind. Back in my pre-Catholic days, I always envied the people who lived in those cozy village settings, with close neighbors, young families, tons of kids running around. I especially envied them at Halloween when they decorated their houses to the hilt and handed out candy to little trick-or-treaters all night long. We lived a few miles outside of Morrisville’s little downtown area, in a two-home cul de sac, and there were no kids to come to our door.

Now I do live in this enviable type of neighborhood, but now, as a practicing Catholic, I’m not allowed to be in the ghosts-and-ghouls business anymore… I think.

“Why can’t things ever work out perfectly?” I silently grouch at Jesus. “It’s always one or the other thing that ruins everything for me.”

He reminds me that not everything has to be black or white. “What if you celebrated Halloween in a way that gives glory to God?”

“How?”

He tells me. Candy-vangelization. What a fantastic idea.

I order a 100-pack of azur-blue paper baggies and a big roll of stickers reading, “Thank you and God bless you.” I’ll stuff the bags with candy and add a saint prayer card to each of them. Jesus and Mary are part of the deck as well. Sure, some kids may just toss their cards, but if there’s just one or two who pause and go, “Oh wow, who is this pretty lady? I want to know more about her,” it’s all been worth it.

I’ve also been asking Jesus about my blog, during my last visit at the Portiuncula. I’m so backlogged that my posts have no chance to ever catch up to the present. He says to stop blogging about the past and move on to the present, starting with the Holy Spirit’s prompt to check out Steubenville. So be it, Jesus.

At some point, I’d like to write in real time or something close to it. And just like the little ones who, I hope, will become hooked on God and the Catholic faith through saint prayer cards, I hope that, through this blog, I can show the New Agers, the unchurched, the lukewarm, and those Catholics who experience religion as lifeless and drab that there is an unbelievable richness in our faith that no other religion or Christian denomination has… and that walking with God can be a total thrill ride—literally the adventure of a lifetime. I feel so blessed by all these signal graces I receive day after day, it’s like living a real-life fairytale.

But it’s not just me. Let me break that fourth wall for a minute and let me tell you: You can have this too.

Jesus wants that personal relationship with you, and all you have to do is meet him halfway. Most of us are so caught up in our daily grind, in our effort to get this “adulting” thing right, that we’ve forgotten that there’s not just a natural but also a supernatural world… and it’s very real.

Jesus is not some guy who died 2,000 years ago. He is here, as you read this, standing right next to you, waiting, hoping for a word from you, some sign that you want to be with him as he wants to be with you. Every time you step into a Catholic church, he is rejoicing inside the tabernacle. If you only knew how happy he is to see you, you’d spend every waking minute at church.

Heaven and hell aren’t just stories people tell to delight good children and to scare naughty ones. Satan is as real as God—and he’s a person, not a metaphor for the evil in the world or in the human psyche.

God did not stop speaking to humans with the last of the biblical prophets. He speaks all day, to each of us, in words, in signs, in His creation—it’s just that most of us won’t listen. And above all, He wants us to love Him as He loves us: the way a child loves its dad. This is what Jesus means when he says, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3)

In his book, Holy Simplicity, Fr. Raoul Plus writes:

A child is so clearly what he is, without subterfuge, complexity, or restraint of any kind. He fears nothing and no one. He is ready to be friendly with all; what he offers, he gives freely. He is all impulse, spontaneity; no reflection embarrasses or checks him, or prompts him how to behave—he is frankly what he is. If he can talk, he instinctively speaks the truth unless his elders have taught him to fib; he is straightforward and cannot believe that anyone would deceive him; everything is a source of wonder to him; he is swift in admiration. If he asks questions, it is not to argue but to learn; and he believes what he is told. He knows that he is weak, and he is not lessened thereby; he pins his faith on those around him, and in his weakness lies his strongest sway.

If you want that childlike faith, then follow Jesus. Jump into VatiGod’s* lap, throw your arms around His neck, and snuggle up to Him. Trust Him completely. Don’t be afraid to feel or look foolish or silly. Believe that He’s speaking to you, right here, right now, and that you will hear what He has to say if you’re willing to listen.

Pray the Rosary every day. Go to Mass often and to Confession at least once a month. Don’t just go through the motions; focus on what’s going on during Mass, listen to what is being said. Read Catholic books, about the saints and by the saints. Keep good company, get close to holy people and learn from them. Be careful what music you listen to and what movies and TV shows you watch.

And most of all, love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind. Do all that and watch true miracles unfold in your life.

In the cold, hard world of the materialists, seeing is believing. In God’s world of magic and miracles, believing is seeing. Remember the mustard seed.

[*“Vati” means “Daddy” in German and is pronounced “Fuh-tee.”]