In Your Mercy

Lately the weight of my sins has been heavy on me.

It's hard to feel worthy to pray when I am in this state.  How dare I speak to God?  How dare I approach Him, taste His Word?

Yet I know that when I am in this state I need to pray all the more.  

I have been feeling more depressed lately.  Unable to sleep.  On top of my exhaustion, my mother sent me an e-mail that hurt my feelings yesterday, and I was angry with her.  But I am not with her, so I took out my anger on my son, when he, because of his own tiredness, procrastinated in doing his homework and made many errors.  

I yelled at him.  I cursed at him.  I threatened him with punishments.  He cried.  I repented.  And now I am sad, miserably sad, at what I did.  I knew while I was yelling at him that I would hate myself for it later.  And here I am, hating myself.

Of course I apologized to him.  Though by the time he went to bed I had apologized profusely and he seemed to be fine, I am afraid that one day I will hurt him, the way my parents hurt me.

I am so scared of hurting him, of losing him.  I do not want to do anything to make him feel towards me the awful ambivalence I feel towards my own parents: that anguished mix of hatred and love, that guilt and resentment, that pain.

There are many sins I must overcome, with God's grace.  My impatience.  My anger.  My gossiping.  My pride.  

Please, God, for the sake of my family, redeem me in Your mercy.  For the sake of my beautiful son, the greatest gift you've ever given me.  Redeem me.  It is not by the strength of my own arm that I will conquer, but by Your strength.  Please help me.  Please don't let me sink again into that abyss of despair.  Don't make me a slave to my desperation again.  I feel the tempest arising and I cling to You.  I've walked in Your light for so long; don't let me lose it again.

The Way of Welcome

Feast of the Epiphany

Let us emulate the Magi: able to see God in the face of an impoverished child, conceived out of wedlock, without a home, born in a stable, forced into exile as a refugee.  The Magi, men of royalty and wisdom, were humble enough to see true royalty and wisdom, and to know that all power and wisdom has its source in God.  Do we see Christ in the faces of the homeless, the poor, pregnant teenagers and single parents, immigrants and refugees?  Can we, like the Magi, approach them in humility, ready to offer the most precious gifts we have?  Can we see in them the face of God on earth?

Let us emulate the star, as Pope St. Leo exhorts us: “The obedience of the star calls us to imitate its humble service: to be servants, as best we can, of the grace that invites all men to find Christ.”  Indeed, the wise men themselves emulated the star: their humble service to the Lord points the way for us.  It is in serving others that we will draw the world to Christ.  Let us be lights that shine in the darkness, lights that burn not for our own sake, but to illumine the way for others on their own journey to Bethlehem - to the place where Christ where be born in their hearts.

Let us emulate the Holy Family, who welcomed these strangers from afar into their homes.  Let us emulate Mary, who showed her willingness to learn from these foreign men, keeping their words and deeds in her heart.  Let us emulate Christ, who opened the gates of heaven to all people.  Let us not be Herods who operate out of suspicion and fear., for these lead to murder and death.  Let us, rather, choose the way of life, the way of joy: the way of openness, of welcome, of embrace, of grace.

The Rules of Love

As far as teaching is concerned, the love of God comes first; but as far as doing is concerned, the love of our neighbour comes first.  Whoever sets out to teach you these two commandments of love must not commend your neighbour to you first, and then God, but God first and then your neighbour.  You, on the other hand, do not yet see God, but loving your neighbour will bring you that sight.  By loving your neighbour you purify your eyes so that they are ready to see God. . .  (St. Augustine's Tractates on St. John)

Social justice must have its foundation on these principles of loving God and loving neighbor, without conflating the two.  God is God and man is man, and loving one's neighbor is not the equivalent of loving God.  It is not "good enough" simply to love one's neighbor and not bother about love of God.  Right teaching - right doctrine - is also essential, as are the worship and prayer that keep our hearts focused on God.  

On the other hand, as Augustine says, though right teaching tells us that God is to be the center of our lives, love of neighbor shows us the vision of this God: "love whoever is nearest to you and look inside you to see where that love is coming from: thus, as far as you are capable, you will see God."  Our neighbor is a gift God has given us to allow us to practice love as we prepare for the vision of Him.  We are rejecting God's grace if we reject the opportunity - and the obligation - to love our neighbors and seek justice for them.

The essential point: loving one's neighbor is not the end of the journey - it is the journey, which has its end in loving God together, in the community of saints.  This is the meaning of the Church universal: "By loving your neighbour, you are travelling on a journey. . . So support your neighbour, who is travelling with you, so that you may reach him with whom you long to dwell."  We love our neighbors by encouraging and supporting them on our mutual journey to God, and we know that we cannot reach God without the love and assistance of our neighbors.  We are interdependent; our fates are intertwined.  Love of neighbor is the path we travel together; love of God is the destination we share.

Without love of God, we wander astray, aimless and purposeless.  Without love of neighbor, we may see our goal, but we will have no way of reaching it.

Love of neighbor is the path we must travel to fulfill our divine destiny.  For, as Augustine says, loving our neighbor empowers us to see God, and, as St. John says, we are what we see: "We shall be like him because we shall see him as he really is."  And the greatest gift we can give to our neighbors is to help them fulfill God's purpose for themselves.  The greatest love we can show our neighbor is to bring them to the love of God.