Passion of Christ, strengthen me.
The line from the Anima Christi I say before receiving communion every week, before feeding my weary soul after more challenges and concerns meet me along the way. This line which stayed with me, as if whispered in my ear, as if a specific kind of encouragement.
I am by nature a passionate person, and have always taken heart in this along with all the Anima Christi prayer. I’ve thought since I was a teen the idea of being “inebriated” was counterculture built in, and that still stuns me, but being a word nerd does not surprise me at all, the Latin base and root words foundational to my understanding, as well as my Portuguese understanding: sanctifica, salva, inebria, lava, conforta, absconda me. Sanctify, save, inebriate, wash, comfort, hide me.
The words immediately remind me of the part in A Wrinkle in Time, when the motherly Beast creature completely wraps our main character in comfort and protection from the evils she has just encountered, a needed respite before she continues onward, inevitably, toward the thing she needed to face. I feel that every single day. I’ve always felt that: the facing of things, of life, straightforward. Sometimes I do want to retreat. This prayer showed me from a young age I could do both—could regroup and then move forward, again. I could become inebriated in the thought and soul process of coming close to the Christ I prayed with and moved towards, each step of my day. Inebriated. Just fully consumed by the energy of the same.
These verbs carry me now. I bring them into each encounter I have, to each person I meet. I’ll meet you along the way.