Category: love/mercy of God

God’s choice of building materials

Sr. Dorcee, beloved3 Comments

Saturday I posted about the “defects of Jesus”.  Here’s another example, posed by G.K. Chesterton, of God doing something exactly the opposite of how you would expect–that is, until you really get to know Him. 

When Christ at a symbolic moment was establishing His great society, He chose for its cornerstone neither the brilliant Paul nor the mystic John, but a stutterer, a snob, a coward–in a word, a man.  And upon this rock He has built His Church, and the gates of Hell have not prevailed against it.  All the empires and the kingdoms have failed, because of this inherent and continual weakness, that they were founded by strong men and upon strong men.  But this one thing, the historic Christian Church, was founded on a weak man, and for that reason it is indestructible.  For no chain is stronger than its weakest link.  (Heretics, Collected Works 1:70)

God desires to build something beautiful on your weakness, if you’ll just give it to him today.

The defects of Jesus

Jesus has a terrible memory. . .

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I know that sounds heretical, but I’m just quoting a cardinal, Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan to be exact.  If you have never heard of him, go here to find out more about his astounding life.  He wrote about the “defects of Jesus” in his book, Testimony of Hope, which is a compilation of the spiritual exercises he gave to John Paul II and the papal household in the year 2o00.  The first “defect” he mentions is “Jesus has a terrible memory.

     On the cross, during his agony, Jesus heard the voice of the thief crucified on his right, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Lk 23.42).  If I had been Jesus, I would have told him, “I certainly will not forget you, but your crimes have to be expiated with at least twenty years of purgatory.”  Instead, Jesus tells him, ” Today you will be with me in paradise” (Lk 23:43).  He forgets all the man’s sins.
     He does exactly the same thing with the sinful woman who has anointed his feet with perfume.  Jesus does not ask her anything about her scandalous past.  He simply says “her many sins have been forgiven because she loved much” (cf. Lk 7.47).
     . . . Jesus does not have a memory like mine.  He not only pardons, and pardons every person, he even forgets that he has pardoned.  (Testimony of Hope,  pp. 14-15)

A God who cannot see clearly

“You have a Father in heaven who can no longer tell you from His Son!” (Paul Claudel)

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Some beautiful passages from Paul Claudel about the love of God for us.  (Take time to meditate on them and drink them in.)

You have a Father in heaven who can no longer tell you from His Son!  (Seigneur apprenez-nous a prier, 72) 

Take courage, then, presumptuous soul, in the thought that you have to do with a God whose mercy prevents him from seeing clearly.  The Bible teems with blind patriarchs, and doubtless it was the news of his father’s dimmed vision that hastened the return of the prodigal son.  For we know too well that when we rush into his arms, his eyes will be good for nothing but weeping. . .  It is not by sight that the Father knows his son, but by touch. ‘The Lord looks on the heart’ (1 Sam 16.7).  It is of the heart alone that he demands the secret of our love.  He inhales us that he may know our scent.  (Presence et Prophetie, 41)

Trusting His mercy

Humility is the gateway to the mercy of God.

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Pondering today how hard we try so often to live lives without sin, but usually because we just don’t want to humble ourselves before others and especially before God. We don’t want to take the risk.  We don’t want to admit that we are imperfect human beings.  But humility is the gateway, the door to His mercy. We don’t really trust His love and mercy.  We should be running to Him with our faults, our sins, asking Him to “punish us with a kiss.”

Let us never assume that if we live good lives we will be without sin; our lives should be praised only when we continue to beg for pardon.  (St. Augustine)

[Let] the greatest sinners [place] their trust in My mercy.  They have the right before others to trust in My bottomless mercy.  My daughter, write about My mercy toward tormented souls.  Souls that make an appeal to My mercy delight Me.  To such souls I grant even more graces than they ask.  I cannot punish even the greatest sinner if He makes an appeal to My compassion, but on the contrary, I justify him in My unfathomable and inscrutable mercy.  Write: before I come as a just Judge, I first open wide the door of My mercy.  He who refuses to pass through the door of My mercy must pass through the door of My Justice . . . .   (St. Faustina, Diary 1146)

“He is looking for us”

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

A meditation from August of last year that I dog-eared in my Magnificat relates to today’s Gospel:

JesusSheepAnother picture that our Lord loves to use is that of the shepherd who goes out to look for the sheep that is lost.  So long as we imagine that it is we who look for God, then we must often lose heart.  But it is the other way about: he is looking for us.  And so we can afford to recognize that very often we are not looking for God; far from it, we are in full flight from him, in high rebellion against him.  And he knows that and has taken it into account.  He has followed us into our own darkness; there where we thought finally to escape from him, we run straight into his arms.
     So we do not have to erect a false piety for ourselves, to give us hope of salvation.  Our hope is in his determination to save us.  And he will not give in!
     This should free us from that crippling anxiety which prevents any real growth, giving us room to do whatever we can do, to accept the small but genuine responsibilities that we do have.  Our part is not to shoulder the whole burden of salvation, the initiative and the program are not in our hands: our part is to consent, to learn how to love him in return whose love came to us so freely while we were quite uninterested in him.        (Simon Tugwell, O.P.)

(For a beautiful card of the Good Shepherd, see the one designed by Jeanne Stephenson at her website.)

A time of stripping

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

I feel like I’m in a time of stripping.  (Ever feel that way? 🙂  And I don’t like it.  (Ever feel that way?)  I don’t like feeling weak and unrighteous and incapable and . . . you fill in the blank.  I don’t like not feeling on top of it or in control.  But–what should I expect if I am re-reading God Alone Suffices, the book I kept feeling drawn to pick up again and re-read?  How do I expect to learn that God alone suffices unless I know how much I don’t suffice?  (You think you’ve learned that lesson . . . and then you find out there’s, oh, so much more to learn . . .)  This is not an easy book to read–because God seems to always provide the lab part while reading it. 🙂  Reading Biela’s books are not for the faint of heart–or maybe they are for the faint of heart because those are the poor of spirit . . .  He’s not really writing anything new–he just does not sugarcoat the truth.  The good news, though, is that God only strips in order to bring us into a deeper knowledge of His love.  To be blunt, it’s pretty hard for a husband to be intimate with his wife while she still has her clothes on.  And it’s just as hard for us to know the much more intimate love of God while we’re clinging to other things so tightly.  So it’s a great grace for Him to allow us to be stripped.

By knocking with His light, Jesus tells us: Let us, you and I, look at you, whom I love, together.  Jesus desires that upon seeing the darkness of your soul, you experience His love.  (S.C. Biela, Open Wide the Doors to Christ, p. 56)

Punishing with a kiss

St. Thérèse, as she often does, comes at things from a different perspective than we might . . .

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Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

This morning I was pondering my failings and starting to move to discouragement–as I am too often prone to do–when the Lord in His mercy brought to mind a section of a letter from St. Thérèse to Fr. Bellière in which she describes the ideal way for us to come to our heavenly Father when we realize our faults.  Reading it always brings me great hope–and I hope it does the same for you:

I would like to try to make you understand by means of a very simple comparison how much Jesus loves even imperfect souls who confide in Him:
I picture a father who has two children, mischievous and disobedient, and when he comes to punish them, he sees one of them who trembles and gets away from him in terror, having, however, in the bottom of his heart the feeling that he deserves to be punished; and his brother, on the contrary, throws himself into his father’s arms, saying that he is sorry for having caused him any trouble, that he loves him, and to prove it he will be good from now on, and if this child asked his father to punish him with a kiss, I do not believe that the heart of the happy father could resist the filial confidence of his child, whose sincerity and love he knows.  He realizes, however, that more than once his son will fall into the same faults, but he is prepared to pardon him always, if his son always takes him by the heart . . . . I say nothing to you about the first child, dear little Brother, you must know whether his father can love him as much and treat him with the same indulgence as the other . . .  (LT 258)

I pray that you will have the confidence to take God by His heart today and boldly ask Him to punish you with a kiss.

I am the one Jesus loves

What if we could each come to the place where we saw our primary identity–as John did–as “the one Jesus loves”?

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Yesterday I was looking through some quotes I had gathered for some small booklets that I have in the past put together to sell at our bazaar.  As I read them, I thought to myself: “I’ve got some good quotes here!”  Here’s a favorite from Philip Yancey:

Not long ago I received in the mail a postcard from a friend that had on it only six words, “I am the one Jesus loves.” . . . When I called him, he told me the slogan came from the author and speaker Brennan Manning.  At a seminar, Manning referred to Jesus’ closest friend on earth, the disciple named John, identified in the Gospels as “the one Jesus loved.”  Manning said, “If John were to be asked, ‘What is your primary identity in life?’ he would not reply, ‘I am a disciple, an apostle, an evangelist, an author of one of the four Gospels,’ but rather, ‘I am the one Jesus loves.’”  What would it mean, I ask myself, if I too came to the place where I saw my primary identity in life as “the one Jesus loves”?   (Philip Yancey)

“God’s heart so abounds in love . . .”

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From Francis de Sales–about how much God loves you:

God’s heart so abounds in love and his good is so great and infinite that all men may possess it while no one man thereby possesses less of it.  This infinite goodness can never be exhausted, even though it fill the spirits of the universe.  (Treatise on the Love of God, 10.14)

God pours his love in no less measure into one soul, even though he loves an infinity of others along with it, than if he loved that soul alone.  (ibid.)