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He Gave His Only Son

"Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed."

John 21:29

• There should be less talk. A preaching point is not a meeting point.


• The dying, the cripple, the mental, the unwanted, the unloved-- they are Jesus in disguise.


• In the West there is loneliness, which I call the leprosy of the West. In many ways it is worse than our poor in Calcutta. (Commonweal, Dec 19, 1997)


• It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing. It is not how much we give, but how much love we put in the giving.


• The poor give us much more than we give them. They're such strong people, living day to day with no food. and they never curse, never complain. We don't have to give them pity or sympathy. We have so much to learn from them.


• I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?


• I do not pray for success. I ask for faithfulness.


• Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.


• If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

~Mother Teresa~

A remark I overheard one morning two weeks ago while I was in the library made me think of our need for God in terms of percentages, in terms of quantities. Someone within my hearing distance was browsing through books that she seemed to intend for use in teaching. Coming across a book of old praise hymns and patriotic songs, she quickly scanned a book and concluded: "this is no good, there's too much God in here." What she said and how she said it seemed to reduce God into a quantity that could be measured and controlled. How much of God in a book would be "just right," I wonder? 20 pages out of 100, or 50 pages out of 100 and not a page more? How much of God in a day would be sufficient 2 hours out of 24 hours? Would going to mass three times in a week, or roughly 3 hours out of 168 hours in a week, be too much, just right, or too little? Would it be too much to think of God for 24 hours, or 100% of the day?

Almost every detail in our daily lives can be measured in terms of how much or how little we have a need, or want for it. For most of these things like food, for example; we do have experts to quantity for us the acceptable percentage of each of these things to ingest and to enjoy without the harmful consequences. Sadly, we sometimes let this seemingly apparent control over what we allow or not allow into our lives to cloud our perception and understanding of how badly we need God's presence in our lives. We may think that we need Him for only that much, but it wouldn't change the fact that we need the entirety of His Divine grace and mercy to save us. Being able to trick ourselves into thinking that we actually can push God away may give us a misleading sense of control or power over our God, leading us to believe that there would a gain in doing so. We behold then a sad irony of percentages: on the one hand, we have our Heavenly Father who has every power and right to be arrogant because He has invested a full 100% for our salvation by subjecting His only begotten son to torture and death for our sake; on the other hand, we who should be bent firmly on our knees for this immense gift of salvation are the ones who have a posture of pride and are being stingy with our gratitude. And so sometimes we fool ourselves into believing that our self-sufficiency could over-ride our dependence on God.

But the question is, who actually gains and who loses when we become arrogant and self-sufficient and reduces our dependence on God to a fraction, instead of depending on Him 100%? Yesterday during my daughter's taekwondo class, the instructor was explaining to them the importance of the "sparring stance." It requires the arms and the fists to be always on guard, with the eyes always focused on the opponent, never letting the eyes to stray away. It also requires a "sliding" movement of the feet every time you see the opponent prepares to raise his leg for a kick, you immediately slide back to avoid the kick. "What happens if you look even a second away from your opponent and fail to move away?" the instructor asked. To demonstrate, the instructor let down his arms and looked away, and another instructor swiftly executed a kick toward the negligent one. If they had been in real combat, the kick would have easily broken the unsuspecting victim's windpipe. "Remember," the instructor concluded, "never for a moment let your eyes off the opponent but always, 100% look in front where he is."

For all of us who are locked in a real battle for our souls, we can apply this wise advice as we assume our sparring and sliding stance against the attempts of evil to bring us down. As part of our defense, we take comfort in St. Paul's advice that we should put on the whole armor of God not just 20% of the armor, not even 90% of the armor of God but 100% of all that God has generously put forward for us to receive and own that we may confidently do battle with Satan, he "who prowls the earth for the ruins of souls." If Satan relentlessly pursues us and is ruthless with his wiles to bring us down, why would we even think that there is "too much God," our God and our ally who has the sole power and victory over evil?

What should be our proper fighting stance therefore as we continue our battle for our eternal lives? We take all that we need from God as much as we can and disregard the temptation to think that "there is too much God." Consider each day as 24 hours, and then claim every minute you spent to honor God and follow Him as a contribution to building your 100% God's armor. Do not take your eyes off the enemy and take comfort always that our God is before us, behind us, and around us, that He will support our weary arms, provide swiftness in our slide and be the strength in our weakness. Each day try to draw a simple line like the one below:

Sin____________________________________________God and victory.

At the end of the day, put a mark on the line to indicate if you have slid closer to God, or to sin, for that day. It doesn't matter if it is just a millimeter a day, or a minute a day, that we gained in movement toward God. No matter how short the move toward God, it corresponds to a move away from the enemy. And just in case we come across someone who would say that there is too much God in our lives, consider it a golden opportunity to exclaim in praise, "Thank God for that excess in my life!"

URLVD

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