Jesus offered Himself for us. His heart was opened for each one of us on the Cross, in his hour of Mercy. He longs for each of us in this hour, and His desire to be with us is here, when He dies on the Cross for our sins. He does not stop loving us because of our sins, but His love is there for us and offered to us while we are still sinners, so that we can be changed by it and saved by it. On the Cross Jesus wants to win our love, by giving Himself totally for us.
Dark and wet and gloomy all day. It is October 13. Where is my miracle of the sun? Why do I feel no sun shining on me? Mary, O Mother Mary. I have had a glimpse of the sun. It is a miracle. I am trying to remember its light in the shadow and the thunder. O Mary, O Mary my Mother. Totus tuus.
Depression is clouding over me. If you’ve read my book, you understand. Well, you understand to some extent. I have doctors. I have medicine. I have therapy. I am down, and it’s something I deal with as part of life. It may be the weather change, my persistent cold, a need to adjust my diet, to get more exercise, to get out of myself and to give love and help to others. I have a chronic infection (Lyme disease) that can flare up anywhere, including the brain. These are all factors of my life about which I have been very open.
All factors to grapple with, factors that make up the environment for the action of my freedom. For me it is in this place, in these moments, that He asks me, “Do you believe in Me? Do you trust in Me? Do you love Me?” This is where my own particular circumstances intersect with every person’s life. We all have this place where we suffer, where we face our own inadequacy, where we discover the smallness of our hearts and the pettiness of all our deeds. And it is here that Jesus asks each one of us, in the most penetrating and poignant way, to believe in Him, to trust Him.
I do believe that He loves me, whatever darkness may surround me.
Why do I fail to entrust everything to this Great Lover? Why am I afraid? What more could He possibly do to deserve my trust?
Jesus, I entrust to You what seems so often to me to be such a complicated business, namely the abandonment of myself to You, the giving of everything over to You, the surrender of everything to You...even my weakness.
I will not give up. Even if I am broken, God is still God, and still Glorious–even more clearly so, for He shares in my brokenness. Here, more than anywhere, it is clear that He is worthy of all my love. He has proven Himself. Thus, in every circumstance–even in the face of the prospect that I have nothing to give, that I am worthless, that all my aspirations in life may end in failure–the only reasonable possibility for me is to love God.
Even if I am nothing, then, still I want to love Him. I beg that I might be able to love Him.
From nothing, God creates, God brings forth life. Jesus I trust in You. Convert me. Conquer me. Give me a new heart.
