Every month, my parish hosts a night of adoration with music, benediction, and confessions in the Church. They also offer pizza beforehand and free babysitting during (Parishes! Take note!), so it’s an offer that’s hard to refuse. After my husband and I dropped off the kids in the nursery, we went to pray in the Church. During adoration, there was a long period of silence in which I had a vision that was extremely vivid and spoke to me profoundly.
In my mind, I saw Jesus knock on the door to my house. I wasn’t expecting any visitors, so I quickly surveyed the room and thankfully it was fairly picked up. I let Jesus in, but he didn’t want to remain in the front room where visitors usually stay, so I led him down the hallway. All the doors to the rooms were shut, but Jesus was asking me to open them. Nervously I opened the bathroom door and again I was relieved that it was pretty clean, but that wasn’t the room he wanted to be in either. Finally I opened my bedroom door and was horrified to see that it was a mess – shoes were spilling out from my open closet doors, the bed wasn’t made, and I had dirty clothes lying all over the floor. Yet this was the room where Jesus wanted to be with me. He knelt down and helped me put the room back together, picking up my clothes and making my bed.
I felt so uncomfortable with the fact that Jesus wanted to hang out with me in my bedroom, but then I heard him say, “I want to be a part of everything you do, from the clothes you pick out in the morning to the way you look at yourself in the mirror. I want to be closer to you than you are to your husband. I desire intimacy with you.”
And then, just as this vision was ending, a song started playing. I had never heard it before, but it’s the song, “Make Your Home in Me” by Ben Walther. The part that stood out to me was the second stanza:
My heart was locked but you had the key/
Make your home in me/
Lord you come to me in your homelessness/
Burning in your eyes such a great distress/
Who will heal your wounds/
Who will make your bed/
I will comfort you/
I will share my bread/
Through the words of the song and the vision during adoration, I had a profound experience of the intimacy that Christ desires with me. Now, most people in our culture equate intimacy with sexual intimacy, but that is not the only kind. Intimacy is intense closeness. It’s the reason Jesus humbles himself into a piece of bread at each Mass in the Eucharist: because he wants to be one flesh with us, giving us his body in a way that’s closer than how we give our bodies to our spouses.
As I continue to reflect upon this vision in prayer, I realize that Jesus doesn’t just want our friendship, or the lip service of clocking in on Sunday mornings. He wants every part of us, to be with us when we wake up in the morning and with every thought that goes through our heads. He didn’t just come down from heaven as a baby and die on the cross to be our buddy. He came to be in intimate union with us through prayer and the Eucharist, until we can be with Him in heaven forever. This was confirmed when I read this in the Diary of St. Faustina this week:
(Jesus speaking:) Tell Me all, My child, hide nothing from Me, because My loving Heart is listening to you.. . Let us talk in detail about everything that weighs so heavily upon your heart. . . Tell Me about everything, be sincere in dealing with Me, reveal all the wounds of your heart. I will heal them, and your suffering will become a source of your sanctification (Diary, 1487).
This advent, I’ve been trying to reflect more in silence, and on the silent love of a God who wants intimacy with me. I pray you’ll join me in welcoming Jesus into the home of your heart this Christmas, and that He would find us prepared and expecting Him.
