As we embark upon our journey toward Easter, we are charged with the task of calling to mind our sins with sincere repentence and taking up afresh the invitation to follow Jesus with renewed conversion of heart.
Christians claim that through the encounter and embrace of Jesus Christ we have come to know the love of God himself. If this is really true, why do we keep "forgetting" God's love and going back to selfishness, egoism, distraction, envy, and strife?
Every day we fail. Even those who aim the highest find that they fall short again and again. Should this be a cause for discouragement? Certainly not.
It should be cause for humility, for prayer, for turning and returning to the sources of grace, the places where Jesus "touches" us. Our faith makes especially clear the fragility of our humanity, our immense poverty, our utter dependence on God for everything.
The "good news" is that God's goodness and mercy are infinitely greater than our weakness, and that he has totally embraced our lives in Jesus. We must not give up, but on the contrary cling ever more fully to him.
Moreover - knowing the depths of God's love and our own frailty - we have all the more reason to look upon the struggles of every human person with compassion. Knowing God's generosity and our own vulnerability, we have every reason to forgive others when they hurt us.
We cannot be complacent. We must always strive to say "yes" to the love that God our Father pours out over our lives each day through the heart of Jesus in the Holy Spirit. Let us praise and worship our God who is Love, and beg for his love to change us, to turn us into lovers, and to show the wonder of his beauty through us on the roads of this world.
Every day we fail. Even those who aim the highest find that they fall short again and again. Should this be a cause for discouragement? Certainly not.
It should be cause for humility, for prayer, for turning and returning to the sources of grace, the places where Jesus "touches" us. Our faith makes especially clear the fragility of our humanity, our immense poverty, our utter dependence on God for everything.
The "good news" is that God's goodness and mercy are infinitely greater than our weakness, and that he has totally embraced our lives in Jesus. We must not give up, but on the contrary cling ever more fully to him.
Moreover - knowing the depths of God's love and our own frailty - we have all the more reason to look upon the struggles of every human person with compassion. Knowing God's generosity and our own vulnerability, we have every reason to forgive others when they hurt us.
We cannot be complacent. We must always strive to say "yes" to the love that God our Father pours out over our lives each day through the heart of Jesus in the Holy Spirit. Let us praise and worship our God who is Love, and beg for his love to change us, to turn us into lovers, and to show the wonder of his beauty through us on the roads of this world.
