It takes two to tango and too often we choose to ‘dance’ solo, absorbed in our opinions, agendas, and preferences. At other times, we choose dance partners which the world offers to us: ideologies, online personalities, fashions, beliefs, lifestyles. When we let go of these things, we become available to dance with Him who is the Lord of the Dance. Ultimately, isn’t this the purpose of Lent?
In Lent we are presented with the violence in the human heart contrasted to the love of Christ. Carrying Christ’s cross with Him, side-by-side, is a blessing. It is a passion of two hearts, burning with love for each other, manifesting in deep sympathy each for the other. Each unwilling to stop the suffering because it is necessary. It is through this suffering together that love deepens.
Throughout ancient history, our Father God kept the secret of His Son hidden from mankind. Having heard Simeon’s prophesy upon presenting Jesus in the temple, so too did Joseph bear that secret of the Father. Our Father wants us to share with Him the deepest secrets in our heart too. How might the world be changed if, this Lent, all Catholics permitted Him to go a little deeper into their heart?
We tend to start each new year with good intentions for changing our flaws and imperfections. The everyday battle, though, can be overwhelming and we too easily find ourselves waving the white flag of surrender. Jesus has provided a way for us to step out of this cycle by living under His standard.
Talking to God in prayer is harder than it seems. How can I be in conversation with someone whose face I cannot even imagine? Scripture tells us God is love, but what does that look like?
Parents are only capable of loving to the extent of their own brokenness. Too often having a child brings to them great fear and anxiety, memories of their own loveless upbringing and voices telling them they are worthless. They look at their child and believe the lying voice that says they are incapable of loving. Just like their own children, they want and expect a love that their own parent couldn’t give.
That is what God is for; He fills in the gaps. But He wants to do more that be a back-up plan for bad days.
“One whom God loves never passes away. It is not just a shadow of ourselves that lives on in Him, in His thought, and in His love; rather, it is in Him, as His creative love that we are preserved forever immortal in the totality and truth of our being. It is His love that makes us immortal and this immortality, this abiding love is what we call “heaven.”
Heaven, then, is none other than the certainty that God is great enough to have room even for us insignificant mortals.” (Pope Benedict XVI)
It is God’s desire to cleanse us of sin today, not to shun us because of it. He has everything in place for us to attain eternal life in Him: saints in Heaven interceding for us, souls in purgatory praying for us, and a monsoon of grace raining upon us.
Personal and family prayer, along with the Sacraments, form the foundation of love upon which family unity is built. Living our faith-filled life now becomes part of the heritage we pass down to our descendants. And as we prepare to enter the holidays, what greater gift can we give than the lived life of grace?
Faith is what keeps us going forward when our heart is frozen in pain. Optimism is just a natural sentiment of the human heart, temporary and deficient. It is supernatural hope from our loving Father that brings forth the wellspring of gifts and graces we seek in life.