“Most of us are a minus sign, in the sense that we do not fulfill the high hopes the heavenly Father has for us. But Mary is the equal sign.” (Archbishop Fulton Sheen).
I have been thinking about God. I have found myself reflecting on the stories in the Old Testament and the reaction of God the Father to the behaviour of the first humans – Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. And in this I have been reflecting on the fall of humanity when first Eve and then Adam chose to disobey God and chose their own pride rather than accept the Holy Will of God…
And when God came to see them, the tone of what I read in the Old Testament is a tone of anger…
“He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’ And he said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?’ The man said, ‘The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.’ Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’” (Genesis 3:10-13).
But, the older I become and the more I interact with my own children, the more I see past my initial infantile view of that anger to the real emotions beneath it…
You see, when my little baby died before he was even born, I was more angry than I have ever been in my life. I was consumed with anger. I was angry with God for allowing this terrible thing to happen, I was angry with my husband for not being able to understand how catastrophic it was, I was angry with myself and my own body for now being able to protect my own child and not understanding how my child had died. I was angry with others for being uncomfortable with hearing about that child, who I still long to talk about all the time.
And it took me many many many years to understand that the anger was actually grief and the grief was actually love. Because I had great love for that child and no way of expressing it when that child was dead… C.S. Lewis, the Christian author said, “I sat with my anger long enough until she told me that her real name was grief.” And I believe this is true.
And in the years since my conversion – for a conversion is really just a revelation – I have come to realise that anger is a mask for many things. And instead of responding in anger, I could chose – in an enlightened state – to respond with the underlying cause of this emotion, which is love itself.
And when I think about that today, I realise that there is so much that I have yet to do to prepare myself for my Creator. And one of the most important things is to see things as they are – from a gaze of love. For there is such great love in the example of the Father, such great and terrible love…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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