God Owns Me

God told me one night that He owned me. I heard this interiorly, without any words being spoken.

I had been watching a television show as I did every evening that I felt had begun to “own” me. I could not seem to get enough of this drama. As much as I liked this series, I usually experienced disappointment afterwards in that I knew I had wasted time that I could have been spending with God.

It was after one such evenings’ viewing that God told me He owned me.

I was comforted to know that He possessed me. I was also led to believe that He was delighted to finally reveal to me that He owned me, and that I should feel similarly because He had graced me with a deeper sense of his presence.

I had really done nothing to deserve this new sense of His presence. I had been wasting time when He revealed Himself to me.

For most of my life, I have been wasting time and skimming the surface of my relationship with God. Only when “I felt like” being with Him did I go any deeper. I was not spending the more significant time with Him that I knew I needed, especially in attempts at fruitful meditation.

I had been generally feeling empty, desolate, forsaken, and depressed; but now He was telling me I was intimately close to Him and should rejoice even if I did not feel that way.

No more shall you be called “Forsaken,”

nor your land called “Desolate”….

And as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride

so shall your God rejoice in you.    Isaiah 62:4-5

At first, I felt amazed that God had bothered to tell me this. Then I began to second guess what was really meant by being owned. Wasn’t that like being a piece of property that was purchased?

But the Apostle Paul tells the people of Corinth, and us, including me:

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy Spirit within you,

whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?

For you have been purchased at a price. Corinthians 6: 19-20

The price of my purchase was the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ, or His Passion, Death and Resurrection. This was a stupendous price for God to pay to own me, and all of us. It demonstrates how deeply He desired us. Now, I needed to respond to this great gift by following in His Paschal footsteps.’

Apparently, this is the next step in God’s plan of life for me that has been unfolding throughout my life.

I recently completed my Consecration to Jesus through Mary which St. Louis de Montfort had termed “holy slavery”. Not only does God own you in holy slavery, but one needs to commit his  will entirely to Mary and God. This has been hard for me to do.

It is a gift knowing that God took the opportunity to tell me personally that he owned me. I want to respond in kind more deeply, and to offer Him my will through holy slavery.

I still feel empty and depressed. I have a tension inside of me that makes me realize how far I have wandered from him. But He is now on my mind more.

My wife and I pray a daily rosary at night before she goes to bed. She interrupted our prayer to ask me how I meditated on the Resurrection. I confessed to her that I had been thinking about the television show. She expressed surprise and said she wondered why I had not made up something holy to cover up for my weakness. I was embarrassed that I had not only been wasting time, but that she was surprised that I had been so forthcoming. I used to hide embarrassing things from her, but can no longer do so with God owning me, and letting that lead me more deeply into union with my wife

I spent the remainder of our rosary that evening in meditation, like she had been doing.