The Center & Summit

I've been sitting here stumbling around with different things to talk about. If this keeps up, I may do permanent damage to my backspace key. When I first sat down I was listening to the Pope's Ash Wednesday homily. As I listened, I hoped for a topic to "Poof" pop out at me. Of course there were different aspects of the homily that could become topics, but nothing really grabbed me until he said that "the Eucharist is the center & summit of the church; the story of salvation." I quickly typed and then played it over and over in my mind. Fourteen words. Fourteen swirled around me. They smoothly moved about my mind. They undulated, tumbled and turned. Not as a twirling dizzy child might, but as a dandelion seed moves upon a gentle breeze. It was quite lovely. Really. But still, it didn't transform me into a writer. The closest I came to getting a topic out of that was that I thought of the fact that our beloved Eucharist - our salvation - is the end point of the journey that begins today and that I want to focus upon the beginning of Lent.
That is when I thought of Jesus beginning His forty days in the desert. Following His baptism, "filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days. (Luke 4:1-2)" While typing those holy words, I felt sure that passage was the place to start. Once it was upon the screen I stared at it for a moment or two. Yep, there I was - posed to stare; posed to stare for many a moment. Yet, not wishing to spend the day staring, with great determination I lept to Matthew's account.
Did you ever realize how close those accounts are? I mean they could be the result one person passing the story on to another - just one degree of separation, if you would. Therefore, I didn't gain the inspiration for which I was looking. Of course, I wondered why Jesus had to be tempted by the devil. I half thought of the physical emptiness that He experienced - looked at it in conjunction to the spiritual emptiness that exists without Him in our lives. He emptied Himself in order to prepare to fulfill prophecy - to fill us with salvific redemption. I could intellectually feel the tugging sensation, the pull, of His hunger, but still didn't come up with anything to say.
Therefore, to you dear reader, whomever you might be, I must admit that I am an empty vessel. I'm an empty vessel longing to be filled by the Master Vintner with that which is the glorious result of His most fruitful vine. Peace.

If you want to take a look at Pope Benedict XVI's 2007 Lenten Message, please use this link:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/lent/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20061121_lent-2007_en.html
If you feel like surfing the web some more, this link will take you to a pretty informative article about Ash Wednesday which includes a very nice prayer for the day:
http://www.americancatholic.org/Newsletters/CU/ac0204.asp