One more time Sweet Jesus!

The very moment one falls from sin is the latest movement that intrigues a call for mercy. The woman at the well did not expect to find her opportunity for forgiveness that day; she would just do her chores. When any of us wakes up from a night of weakness and ponders the satisfaction of an interlude of pleasure the thoughts that now belittle us stands as a conviction of human error.

How blessed each one that does not find a sentry standing over us with a whip to punish our latest failure. If that were so almost no one could make it one more day without succumbing to what Jesus did in the garden of Gethsemine. After withdrawing about a stone’s throw from them and kneeling, he prayed, saying, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still not my will but yours be done.” (Lk 22: 41 - 42). This was not for his sake but as Jesus saw your weakness and ultimate failure this monologue with his Father was for this latest failure you or I fell into.

Disfigured by sin and death, man remains “in the image of God,” in the image of the Son, but is deprived “of the glory of God,” of his likeness.” The promise made to Abraham inaugurates the economy of salvation, at the culmination of which the Son himself will assume that image” and restore it in the Father’s “likeness by giving it again its Glory, the Spirit who is “the giver of life.” (CCC 705).

Each action of the Passion that Jesus suffered for man became the very scenario over and over every time he failed. The woman at the well confessed her sin of living with a man who was not her husband, on the heels of five other husbands before. (Jn 4: 18). The living water Christ could give her is the same that flows through us refreshing the residue of sin each time we fail.

Because man continues to sin Christ is in the garden on his knees each moment you and I fall from the moment of pleasure that lasts only a second. “One more time, Sweet Jesus” should be the mantra we reflect upon. Yet, we are reminded of Paul’s asking the Lord to remove the thorn Satan put into his side; we don’t know what it was but the pain of a nuance of any sort can bring us down without the Lord’s intercession. (see 2 Cor 12 : 6 - 8).

“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor 12: 9). Without his grace that is always forgiveness for all of our sins we would succumb to a life that would be in the power of Satan.

We can never escape the temptations that confound us because of the commonality of our human make-up. If there were never anything that would draw our desires to reach for untouchable entities there would not have been a reason for Christ to enter humanity through the Incarnation and man would still be on the outside of paradise. All this proves God’s love is so deep for mankind that he became the ransom needed to forgive our failures. “O happy fault of mine that brought Christ to the Cross that put away the throes of sin forever.”

(cf the Exultet).

Ralph B. Hathaway