Ep.28 | The frustrations of being forgetful of God’s forgiveness
(Meditation song at the end - You Alone by Sarah Hart and Dwight Liles)
It took me a little while to connect to the Holy Spirit Wi-Fi this morning since so much time has passed since my last entry. I was trying to think of what exactly I was going to say about the absolutely amazing season of Easter that we’re in, the intensity of the three days that preceded Easter and their ever-deepening meaning in my life, the anticipation of the end of the Divine Mercy novena today and its meaning…
Well, the title for today’s entry is what flowed out and I think it’s quite clever how the Holy Spirit is able to alliteratively sum up my latest struggles and sufferings, in the context of all the above.
Let’s just start out by saying the Catholic Church surely knows how to celebrate…my kind of people! Hehe. I love celebrations and I just think it’s absolutely wonderful that we have 50 days, yes, five-zero, days to celebrate the victory that God won for us, through Jesus’ painful passion (aka His suffering before He died), death, and resurrection.
In the Roman Catholic Church, there is a flow, called the liturgical season, and within are times of preparation before a big important celebration of our faith. For example, the four weeks of Advent before Christmas and the 40 days of Lent before Easter. Then there are special days of celebration that follow the big day itself, usually 8 days (also called an Octave) of that celebration.
Out of all of the celebrations in the liturgical year, we not only have an Octave to celebrate Easter, but an entire 50 days in the Church year to celebrate God’s Goodness, Faithfulness, and Forgiveness! And I think because of where I am now in my faith journey, seeing where I’ve come from and where I am now, it’s truly a celebration indeed!
So what exactly is being celebrated?
What happened on Easter is the crux of our faith – Jesus stomped out the one major thing that the enemy held over us, the bane of our existence – the fear of death. It’s the fear that that this life we are given is IT. And as if the total undoing of that falsehood wasn’t enough, Jesus opened up the doors of Heaven for us to prove that this life is NOT IT, but rather, we are part of something eternal and that our purpose, our life, is rooted in that.
In Jesus’ ministry when He was alive, He spent all that time trying to teach us this and how it is that we were supposed to be living in order not to suffer as much as we had been. Our suffering came from being dooped by the enemy time and time again, being pulled in all sorts of directions through our attractions to things that took us away from what the point of our life was/is.
No matter how many times God sent us people to help us, aka the prophets of old, we just wouldn’t listen. So God, out of deep deeeeep love for us said, you know what, these stubborn kids of mine aren’t going to get it and I’m losing them…fast. I need to get them back and show them how much I love them and give them everything they need to not fall victim and keep getting hurt. Too many of my children are suffering and dying at the hands of Satan. I’m paraphrasing of course…
And so He did. He gave us everything we needed – Himself. Through Jesus, we were not only given even more direct and explicit guidance of how to live, spoken by Jesus Himself when He was alive and then passed on by His select 12 and beyond, we were given the power of God Himself to stop Satan in his tracks and be given the spiritual weaponry (e.g. the Church, her Sacraments) to be able to see and call Satan out on his bluffs and not be swayed by his cunningly destructive ways.
Not only that, but God knows just how flawed we are and how even with the power of Himself, we still will mess up. So He gave us access to His mercy, His favor that we most certainly don’t deserve, but receive (if we are open to it) because He loves us. As I have said before and will say many times, we have been reconciled to God through Jesus, eternally. So we now are able to fearlessly turn back to God every time we fall to ask for His help – and He will….granted, He’ll help through an invitation for us to do something, which usually doesn’t answer our plea for help in the way the WE want. But if we do accept the invitation, God will help, every time, in every moment, in every situation – big or small – because of His love for us.
But wait! There’s more! God ALSO gave us citizenship to Heaven through Jesus’ death and resurrection, which gives us friends (aka the angels and saints) in VERY high places to pray for us and help us on our journey. We need it! It’s no easy fete to humble ourselves and admit our weakness in every moment, to ask God and others for forgiveness, to be able to ask for and draw on God’s mercy, to remember that He does love us, to not feel hopelessness and despair in difficult times, to remember the divine and soul-serving purpose of our sufferings and what do with them, to imitate Jesus, to put God first, to trust in Him…
I mean, even for me, I read all of this, a very condensed summary of why it is Easter deserves a 50 day celebration, and it puts my moments of ‘I don’t understand why this is happening, I don’t know how much God thinks I can handle, I just don’t know what to do, I’d be better off in heaven’ moments to shame…of which I had a major one of just yesterday.
It was the kind of day where I was seemingly inconsolable, completely paralyzed at some point where all I could do was just tearfully stare out the window. It took my most amazing husband to be open to receiving the graces to be patient with me, because no human being could muster up the amount of patience on their own that was needed to walk with me in that moment. So I thank him for doing his difficult part.
Now, on the other side of said moment, I realize just how much all of what I just summarized goes out the window most of the time, when faced with moments of suffering. For me at least, my vision is so narrowed and I focus on the sorrows of the now, totally unable to zoom out a bit and see how God has loved me and helped me, let alone all of humanity.
In those moments, I surely become a forgetful child and isolate myself from the forgiveness and love of God. So it continues, this journey of learning how to suffer well.
I just pray that I’m able to embrace this Easter season’s celebration throughout this very taxing season. I know I asked the Lord to help me trust Him more, but man was I not ready for what that required!
Personal Prayer: Our Father, you love us perfectly and I so often forget that. Not only that, but my love for you is so feeble. Please forgive me and help me to grow in confidence of Your love and unfathomable ways, especially in times of deep suffering. For this moment at least, please receive my gratitude for saving us and giving us Jesus to bring us back home to you. And beyond this moment, may all that I do be an offering, a song of praise and thanksgiving to You, perfected through Jesus. Amen.