We do not achieve holy recollection
by Receiving but by denying-St. John of the Cross, "Sayings of Light and Love."
This
may seem like an odd thing to say when we consider that we rely on God’s grace
to do good works because of our fallen nature.
However, at the heart of this saying is the implication that God will
give us the grace to overcome all sinful difficulty, for God never gives us
something that we cannot handle. The
greater the difficulty, the greater the grace, and the greater the blessing, because
these are the times that we realize our own weakness and are given the
opportunity to pour our faith and hope into God and rely on his strength. This is what St. Paul means when he writes, “My
grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness. I will rather boast most gladly of my
weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me.” (2 Cor.
12:9). The great question is why do we
not overcome every sin with such graces from God? The reason is because we are not open to
receive them for our hearts are focused and poured out into what is not
God. This makes our souls like a dirty
window on a sunny day, the Sun shines equally on the window whether it is clean
or dirty, but a clean window allows the room to be fully open to the Sun’s
light whereas the room that has the dirty window is only partially open to the
light of the Sun. This dirt is caused by
sins and any sinful habit that we have formed.
Until we deny those sins and sinful habits we will not be able to open
up our hearts fully to allow for God to have his light shine completely through
us, so those in the room no longer see the window, but only the Sun shining through
the window. This happens because the window has no dirt to interfere
with the light of the Sun. So how do we
clean our windows? We clean them by going to the sacrament of Reconciliation
and confessing our sins fully and honestly, for if we are not completely honest
and open then we are not giving Christ permission to heal us. Christ will not impinge upon our free will and
only comes where he has been invited by a sincere heart, but once invited he
will waste no time on arrival just sometimes his arrival is not in the form
that we expect. That is why when we are
not honest in confession and sorry for our sins, we are not fully inviting
Christ to clean the windows of our soul.
It is after we have been cleansed through the sacrament of
reconciliation that we can experience the weight of sin lifted off our
shoulders and have a fresh start once again of denying sin and allowing the
divine light to enlighten our soul. It
is important to realize that after we go to confession we will have to go again
for we are sinful by nature, but in-between each visit we need to strive for
improvement in the denial of sin. Often
Christ will tug at our hearts to work on one imperfection at a time, for if he
was to ask us to work at all of our imperfections at the same time, we would
easily become overwhelmed and fall into the great sin of despair. Also it is important to realize, Christ will
often use other people to help us overcome our struggles so that we can deepen
our humility and our sense of being a part of the Body of Christ. Let us give thanks to God today for giving us
the gift to be able to aspire to such a relationship with the One True God,
which is the one gift that is worth dying to ourselves so that it may no longer
be I who lives but Christ who lives in me (Gal. 2:20).
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