Is there some weight upon you? Are you ashamed of something from your past that keeps resurfacing to drag you down into the depths of hopelessness? Or perhaps something about who you are causes you shame?
Shame is a heavy burden to carry. You are not meant to carry it.
Think of the woman condemned for adultery. Jesus bent down and wrote in the dust—tradition says He wrote the sins of those who wished to stone her—and told her accusers that the one without sin should cast the first stone. Each knew the burden of his own sin and departed, leaving her alone with Jesus. He rose and looked at her with love, saying to her: "Neither do I condemn you." (John 8:11)
Jesus says the same thing to you today.
Saint Paul reiterates that point in his letter to the Romans: "There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus." (Romans 8:1)
Who is it then who condemns you?
Another name for Satan is the accuser. What your enemy wants is that you focus on yourself and your sin rather than looking to Christ and His mercy. Every sin is the same old story: it begins with temptation, a draw toward the pleasure and immediate gratification, but as soon as you have given in, the devil turns on you, asking how you could possibly have been so stupid as to fall into that sin. Frankly, he hates you and wants your destruction. It is so easy to believe those lies of condemnation.
Think of the story of the man who had been lying near the pool of Bethsaida. For thirty-eight years he had lain there, paralyzed, hoping someone would carry him to the pool when it was stirred up that he might be healed.
When Jesus comes to the man, He asks: "Do you want to be healed?"
Why does He ask that? It seems obvious that a paralytic man lying near a pool of healing wants to be healed. He has spent thirty-eight years of his life lying there hoping for that very thing.
Or has he?
It is easy to want healing, but not be willing to pay the price. That paralytic said he had no one to carry him down to the water. Could he have asked a complete stranger? Was it only his pride that kept him from receiving what he needed? Scripture does not tell us, but the question of Jesus makes me wonder.
All the paralytic does in response to that question is to make excuses. Yet Jesus merely tells him to pick up his mat and walk. (John 5)
Similarly, He tells us: "Deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow Me." (Luke 9:23)
Sometimes—more often than not I would say—that cross is ourselves with our sins and flaws and imperfections. We desire so much to be good—to be perfect. We want to make ourselves holy, as if we could achieve heaven by our own effort.
Stated in such explicit fashion that idea is clearly folly. Yet it hides within us beneath layers of lies woven by our clever enemy, especially the lie that says our mistakes have ruined the plan God had for us.
Do you truly believe you are that powerful? Could you, a mere mortal, possibly interfere with the plan of an all-knowing, all-good, all-powerful God who is Being Itself?
I sincerely doubt it.
If you have ever believed that your life is ruined because of any action or sin of yours, you may have fallen for that subtle lie of believing in a weak and powerless god who is certainly not the God who came down from heaven and died on the Cross to set you free. When you choose to believe in His sacrifice for you—when you accept Him as your Savior—that truth will set you free. (John 8:32)
Often something stops us from truly believing and accepting that truth, however. Often that obstacle is our own pride, disguised perhaps from our own eyes.
For many years, my idea of holiness was of being perfect. Reading about saints who were perfect from a young age (at least according to their biographers, for they would never have described themselves thus) further cemented an idea forged in my own inner vicious cycle of believing that I had to be perfect to be loved. In terms of relationship with God that would mean that my relationship with Him would depend upon what I did--i.e. what I call NeoPelagianism, or the idea that I could earn my way to heaven without grace. Clearly untrue.
My intellect absolutely knows its falsity. To convince my heart of that fact, however, is an entirely different matter. Is it the same for you?
Consider the following phrase: "There is nothing you can do that will ever make God love you any less or any more."
Do you believe that?
It is true in a more profound way than you will ever know in this life. It speaks to the mystery of God's overwhelming love for you. Yes, His love for you, not merely for the you-that-does-the-good-things or the you-that-you-wish-you-were or even the you-that-you-will-be-someday-if-you-can-ever-get-your-life-together. He loves you just as you are.
He loves your brokenness even. Can you love it?
Whatever you have done, whatever you regret, He has allowed.
Think about that for a moment.
It can be a hard truth to accept. It is far easier to embrace the active part of God's will: the part that wills good things and works miracles and brings healing. It is far harder to embrace the passive part of His will: the part that allowed the Crucifixion and that permits all the sin and suffering in the world and in your own life.
Believing in the Crucifixion necessitates believing in the Resurrection. So too does belief in the sin and suffering in your life demand belief in Divine Providence.
God allowed the Crucifixion to conquer sin and death that we might share in His divinity and one day see Him face to face in the glory of Heaven. Saint Paul says that "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love Him." (1 Corinthians 2:9) The greatest evil possible—that men should kill God—leads to an unimaginable good.
If He can do that, He can surely bring great goods out of your situation, whatever it may be, beyond your imagination. Trust means choosing to believe that truth.
Surrender to God and accepting His will often requires us most to embrace our own selves with all of our flaws and mistakes and sins. Can these separate us from the love of God? Only if they lead us to pride and self-sufficiency—to a rejection of God. If they lead us instead to repentance and we cry out for God's mercy, we become more able to love.
Do you remember what Christ said about the woman who anointed His feet and wept over them and whom the Pharisees condemned? He said that she loved much because she had been forgiven much and that if she had been forgiven less--—i.e. if she had sinned less—she would have loved less.
Have you ever considered that your sins might be the price for being able to love?
"O happy fault! O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!" we pray in the Exultet at the Easter Vigil Liturgy. Those words speak of the fruit that came from God's response to original sin: Christ becoming Man to be our Savior.
What if each of us could take those words to heart after we have been reconciled to the Lord? "O happy fault that has led me to the foot of the Cross! O necessary sin that has purified my heart of self-love, washed away my pride, and opened my heart to the mercy of so great a Redeemer whose love is poured out into my heart?"
I pray that you are able to believe these words. I pray that they can be the foundation of a new understanding of who you are in the sight of the Lord.
This truth shall indeed set you free. Then the path that you are on will bear fruit, for your vocation is love. And what is love except what Christ has shown us in letting Himself be nailed to the Cross and giving Himself breath by breath to bring us to life?
Whatever path you have left behind no longer matters. Your loving Father calls you to respond to the new and changing reality before you. His love meets you not on the roads you have not taken, but on the one you walk. It is there He is doing something new. The Lord says to you now, as He said through the prophet Isaiah:
"Remember not former things, and look not on things of old. Behold I do new things, and now they shall spring forth, verily you shall know them: I will make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. The beast of the field shall glorify me, the dragons and the ostriches: because I have given waters in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, to my chosen." (Isaiah 43:18-20)
You are His chosen one. Out of all the pain—out of all the darkness—He shall bring you to life again.
Be not afraid!
You have His promise:
"Behold I am with you all days,
even to the consummation of the world."
even to the consummation of the world."
(Matthew 28:20)
and
"Behold I make all things new."
(Revelation 21:5)
Our Lady too is with you on your journey. As you give to the Lord your fiat, receiving Him in His miraculous fullness given to you in every moment, she is interceding for you, obtaining for you all the grace that you need to hope in the Lord and in His promises.
Love and prayers,
+Jac
