The greatest miracle of the universe is the willingness of my God to forgive my sins…
Faith – by its very nature – is a difficult thing.
After all, faith means that a person is able and willing to believe in something that they cannot see in the hope of one day being able to actually see the thing that they believe!
And faith does not look pretty or easy. Faith looks like being turned away at the inn door and knowing that there is no room for the Blessed Virgin to give birth. By this phrase – “no room” what was actually meant was that there was no suitable room for her. And that is significant! Because even knowing that there was no place available that was private enough for a young woman to give birth that night, still the two souls in Bethlehem had faith…
And they are not the only ones…
“Four men brought to him a paralytic. And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and when they had made an opening, they let down the pallet on which the paralytic lay. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘My son, your sins are forgiven.’ Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, ‘Why does this man speak thus? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?’” (Mark 2:1-12).
And it was that faith in the ability of Christ to heal their friend that meant that the paralytic’s friends continued to preserve and overcome every difficulty to get him in front of God Himself.
And those difficulties were real. They had to climb a ladder into a roof lifting a man who was paralysed up with them. They had to lift and haul him. They probably broke out into a sweat… Maybe he slipped on the ropes as they tried dragging him up? Perhaps he screamed out thinking that he would fall to his death? Perhaps the man who was paralysed had been paralysed in a fall and therefore was terrified of heights and falling?
In other words, it was hard work. And only their faith sustained them…
And faith – however it is expressed and however it looks – is the THING that sustains us throughout all our lives…
When Blessed Alvaro was asked at the end of his life to identify his happiest moments, his response was, “Those moments in which God forgave my sins in the sacrament of Confession.”
And I have been thinking about that today – for it takes great faith to believe in something bigger than myself. And there is NOTHING that reminds me of how much bigger than myself God truly is, than His ability to forgive a miserable soul like mine.
After all, the greatest miracle of the universe is the willingness of my God to forgive my sins…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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