In Weakness we find strength, Through Adversity we grow Pure!

A follow-up to “In Weakness” June 2018 

“My Grace is sufficient for you” Jesus told Paul.  (1 Cor. 12:8).  How often any of us can allude to the fact that try as we might there is at least one thorn we cannot overcome?  One article quite often reminds me of how much I need to return to those words of Jesus, especially when my particular weakness rears up its ugly head and confronts me after I lose my focus on God.  That reflection is titled “Rejecting God when we sin”.  June 2017.  

Succumbing to the attraction of any sin is an unfortunate sickness that will confront us as humans.  It is there!  Rather than bemoan the presence of evil, reflect back to the words “O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer” sung in the Exultet at the Easter Vigil reminding us that without the fall of Adam God would’ve had no reason to send His Son into the world, and we would never have the opportunity to see or share with Him throughout eternity.

If failure wasn’t obvious to a fledging sinner, the reason to seek God would not be apparent.  Continued slipping away from the promises of Jesus would find that the meaning of “need” no longer exists.  

What would we be like without that weakened nature when words of encouragement aren’t enough to lift us up each time we fail in life?  Meaning our failures are enough to discourage us and the reminder that God is the Hope which opens the path to lift ourselves up by our boot-straps.  No weakness to remind us of failures; no hope to overcome those falls without faith.  The word “need” as related through prayer would become obsolete and perhaps disappear from our vocabulary.  

Iron is put through a crucible of intense heat to remove the dross until it becomes hardened steel.  We are also put through a crucible of temptations and suffering which will eliminate the dross of sin.  Both iron and the weakened person can never withstand the throngs of time and the winds of adversity unless purified by elements that will give strength and lasting endurance.  The purified steel, even though strong, will one day collapse over time.  The purified person, now strengthened by faith, will never fail in the end.  There is no end to those who grow strong with the fires of purification.

It may appear that continued articles as this are redundant.  But the throes of sin, failure to overcome the attractions to it, and an inner inability to rise above this evil are more than enough reasons to continue talking about it.  Writing prose in defense of curing it and singing the praises of God’s Mercy should be a constant reminder of the “need” to reach out to a Forgiving God and be reconciled each living moment.

How much exhortation reflecting on Sin, God as the Hound of Heaven seeking each one, and His never-ending Mercy for us is too much?  Perhaps not enough since the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.  (Mt. 12: 8).  

There are some themes, in the life of spiritual direction, that can not just be iterated once and then move on to the next item as if one word or voiced message should suffice.  Lenten themes are one such example.  Year after year we hear the same readings, listen to similar homilies, walk the road of Via Delorosa, and cry at the Cross upon which Jesus hung and died.  Yet, the very reliving of each cruel blow, each precious drop of His Blood that fell, and each time we felt the evil of sin that put Him there, the repetition is never too much, too often, too hard to watch.  So it is with the reminder of sin and its horrible tenets that should lift our stony hearts to rise from darkness into the Light that John’s Prologue describes (Jn. 1: 1-18).